The hidden money financing your favorite songs

We all need a trusted source for music discovery – a music-savvy friend or family member, a music site – or someone on social media. But are influencers taking money to promote music and not telling you? Today we’re bringing you an episode of NPR’s It's Been a Minute, where host Brittany Luse talks to NPR music reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento about the details and broader implications of this practice. Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

  Do you have a person who turns you on to new music that fits and expands your tastes? Maybe it's a music savvy friend, or a family member, or a music site, or a social media influencer with good recommendations. But are influencers taking money to promote music and not telling you? And what does that mean for regular music enjoyers who just want a trusted source for music discovery? I'm Stephen Thompson. Today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we are bringing you an episode of It's Been a Minute. Host Brittany Luse sat down with NPR Music Reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento to get into the juicy details and the broader implications of this practice. Here's Brittany.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Whose music recommendations do you trust and why?

• 1:05Speaker 03

  I mean, this is gonna sound annoying, but I have to say, my colleagues at NPR Music.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  That's sweet.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  I love their recommendations. I trust their recommendations. I think they all have incredible taste and they all have like a different specialty of music, so I go to them all the time. And also, my best friend Kendall, she has great taste in music. I listen to anything that she recommends.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I love that. I love that. I get mine from my friend Jordan, who I've been friends with since 2003.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  So you trust those recommendations?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Yes, I have been taking his music recommendations for 23 years, okay? He's the friend who introduced me to MIA back in 2004. She was not an easy artist to find in Michigan in the pre-social media era, you know?

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  It's good to find people who are gonna put you on to some hot, new music that is just your taste. But lately, it's getting harder and harder to trust online tastemakers because they might be getting secretly paid to shill for labels. This is not a conspiracy theory, it's real. Indie musician Eliza McLamb posted a substack about this a few months ago that went viral about a billboard interview she watched with the founders of Chaotic Good, a digital marketing agency. These founders described their, quote, "narrative campaigns and user-generated content that basically make viral moments happen through creating or paying social media accounts to post about specific artists."

• 2:33Speaker 02

  NPR Music Reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento saw this and wanted to talk to the online tastemakers that are paid to post and don't tell you about it, which, by the way, is potentially illegal. And there's a lot of questions that came up for me around this. Like, what does this mean for us regular music enjoyers? And can we ever disentangle money from the internet and from culture? Isabella is here with me to get into it. Welcome back, Isabella.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  I want to first start by talking about these interviews that you've done with online creators. Like, how much are they getting paid?

• 3:26Speaker 03

  So it's a sliding scale. I talked to five content creators. Some of them requested anonymity, so they could speak freely about the relationship between creators and record labels. But essentially, they all told me they're making hundreds of dollars off of these videos. Low end was about $150, high end was about $600 per video. They told me that either marketing agencies or record labels will come to them and ask them to make videos promoting a specific song or promoting a specific artist. Then they kind of like come up with a script. The marketing agency or label approves that, and then the video gets made and goes up. So there's a lot of back and forth.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Wait, so, okay, describe to me, like, what do these videos look like?

• 4:08Speaker 03

  It usually looks like a normal person talking to their phone, maybe they have a little microphone, and they're saying something like, here's a great album that came out this week that you should know about. Or, if you like so-and-so artist, have you heard of this person? Or sometimes they're also reaction videos, which are becoming more and more popular. And that's where there's like a split screen, where maybe the top half of the screen will be like a music video. And then at the bottom, you have a creator that's like live reacting to the video. Some of the people I talked to told me that they do these for money from record labels.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Wow, okay. So I've seen lots of videos that are like that. But those aren't spawn con, but like, I don't know. Maybe they are.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  I would say the key thing about these videos is they don't necessarily look like ads, because all of the people I talked to told me they often don't disclose when something is being paid for by a label or agency. So there's nothing that's like, you know, hashtag partner, hashtag sponsored content. Usually, I feel like it's pretty clear when something is an advertisement, there's like a label at the bottom flagging that for you. And I think a lot of us just keep scrolling. These videos tend to not have that.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Who are they promoting? What kinds of artists?

• 5:15Speaker 03

  I mean, I think across the board, this is way more widespread than we realize. Two of the artists that were named to me explicitly in the interviews were the up-and-coming pop star Bella K. She is signed to Atlantic. I reached out to Atlantic for comment about this, whether they could confirm or deny that they had been a part of these, you know, marketing campaigns, and they did not get back to me. The other artist, on the other end of the spectrum, was the Rolling Stones. Somebody told me they got paid to promote a single off the Rolling Stones' new album and that it wasn't disclosed. And that one was particularly interesting, Brittany, because the Rolling Stones put out this music video where they used AI technology to like deep fake younger versions of themselves.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  And it was for that same single. I also reached out to the Stones' label, and they also did not get back to me. So.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  This is so, yeah, continue, but there's just something about this that's so desperate.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Interestingly enough, the influencer told me that they asked him not to talk about the AI in the video. So it was kind of like a trying to shift the narrative back into the music, like to talk about the song and how great the song was and to not mention the controversy over the video. But yeah, I think a lot more artists than we realize are probably participating in this. The influencers told me it's a really common practice. But I think those two examples just show how this is happening across the board. If you have someone who's like an up-and-coming pop star with their first viral song, and then you have the Rolling Stones, it's like, safe to assume a lot of people in between those two levels of success are probably participating in some kind of social media paid campaign.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm wondering, like, how do the influencers view this sort of ethics of what they were doing? Like, how did they think about this?

• 6:50Speaker 03

  To be honest, most of them expressed some kind of unease with the whole thing, you know? Some of them said that they didn't want to feel like they were selling out to the music industry. They all said they would only accept payments for songs that they would be already likely to promote, or like that they would reject a song promo if they felt like it didn't already fit the kind of music they usually recommend or didn't already fit their taste. But for the most part, there seemed to be a real gray area in understanding, like, the legality around what it means to accept money and not disclose it to promote a song. And also, I think there seemed to be some confusion about the sort of moral and ethical

• 7:32Speaker 03

  guidelines around these practices, because I think, you know, in the old school days, if you like worked at a newspaper, or a radio station, or some kind of media company, there was probably some kind of ethical handbook that you were supposed to adhere to.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  There was something.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  There was something that like everyone kind of understood was like best practices and things that are frowned upon. I think influencing is kind of the wild, wild west. All of these people are independent contractors, they're all kind of figuring it out on their own, and they're all coming up with their own rules. So there are more gray areas, I think, for what some people find acceptable versus not acceptable.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Right. This all makes me think of Paola, which I'm sure some listeners are familiar with. It was a big thing in radio in the first half of the 20th century, where record labels were paying radio stations, or even individual DJs, to play particular songs. But it was officially outlawed in 1960. And now, you know, as you also noted, online creators have to say whether their posts are advertisements in accordance with FTC laws against deceptive advertising. But if they're promoting a song that's free to listen to, right? Does that count?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Right. And that's the reasoning some of the influencers gave me. You know, they were like, this feels different than trying to sell like makeup, because you're not telling people to go buy something, you're just telling people to listen to a free song. But I think what gets lost in that is that songs aren't free. Songs are technically products. They're products that labels and artists sell. Even if you're not buying an album, but you're listening on, say, Spotify, there are people getting royalties for those streams. If you're using a sound repeatedly on TikTok, like, and then listening to it that helps drive, you know, the billboard charts, like, I think there's all these waves of how listening to a song or promoting a song does sort of then inspire conduct that makes people money. It makes the record companies money, it makes the artists money. And according to the Federal Trade Commission, if there's any kind of financial relationship

• 9:24Speaker 03

  or endorsement, the influencers are supposed to be disclosing it in the caption, they're supposed to be disclosing it as superimposed text on the video, and in the audio. So regardless of whether people think a song is free or not, they are accepting a financial relationship from a record label or a marketing agency, and they're still not following those guidelines of clearly disclosing it to the public.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  We're gonna take a quick break, but first, if you're a longtime listener or brand new to It's Been a Minute, be sure to come back every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for brand new episodes. And did you know you can make it even easier to get new episodes by hitting the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app? Whether you're a new friend or a loyal bestie, join the team by subscribing today. Coming up, after the break.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  It does make you sort of question, like, oh, do I like this because I like this? Or do I like this because I'm being exposed to it every time I open an app on my phone? And all of these people that I think are cool also think this is cool? Like, it kind of makes you question your personal taste.

• 10:30Speaker 02

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• 11:41Speaker 02

  Something I'm wondering is like, why is there this kind of fuzziness? Like, in the music industry specifically, like, there are plenty of brands for makeup or clothes or food or whatever that have open relationships with online creators. What makes music different? Like, why is this such an issue in music where people are like, really upset and offended by this in a way that maybe this is not the case in other industries?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  I mean, I think there are a couple of reasons. One, being the gray area that you noted, that maybe people feel like there is more of a fuzziness around listening to music versus buying a product. People don't necessarily see music as products. I think-

• 12:23Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a whole issue in and of itself, yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, we see music as art, and I think it's something that people really take to heart. Like, you build community through music, you connect to other people through music, you build parts of your identity through the music that you listen to. And I think people are really attached to this idea of like, tastemaking and music discovery as being these organic activities, as being this thing that you do because it's a reflection of who you are as a person and the things that you like. And I think that people don't want to feel like they're actually just being told what to listen to by labels. They don't want to feel like they're just like cogs in a machine of corporate greed. And so I think there is a little bit more of a backlash because music represents something

• 13:07Speaker 03

  about who you are in a way that maybe, you know, makeup or coffee does not. For some people, maybe it does.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  That makes sense. I mean, it's like, it's like if I'm looking for, if I want to buy a certain concealer or, I don't know, a type of olive oil, there's a very specific hole, like a use hole in my life that I'm looking for a product or the best product to fill. And that's not how we think about listening to music. It's not like we're necessarily thinking, I must strive. What is a song that could fill that time?

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  It's a lot more emotional than that.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Like, people listen to music because they love it. People love music. And I think that you have a different relationship to music than you do to most products, and you have a different relationship to listening to music than you do to like, regular consumption, or at least a lot of us who are fans of music do. So I think that that's kind of why there is this backlash to understanding that some of this stuff is being kind of engineered behind the scenes by record labels. And also, I think on social media, the apps have become so, so important to success in the music industry. Like, music and audio is so native to an app like TikTok. You know, it's how new artists like, build buzz and get signed, it's how they promote their music, it's how, you know, like, this year at the Grammys, we saw that every single

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Best New Artist nominee was someone who had had a big song on TikTok the year before. Like, it's a real marker of success. And I think if it feels like music discovery on those platforms is fake, then that success is also, in a way, maybe not fake, but being engineered in a way that feels uncomfortable to people who have like, a real emotional attachment to the music.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  I also feel like we see a lot of like skepticism with music, like, people lob accusations that certain artists are industry plants, regardless of whether we even really know what's going on with them. That feels like something that's kind of essential to this conversation as well.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. I mean, I think like, industry plant, nepo baby, there is this sort of cynicism around the music industry. And like, fans do already kind of have this suspicion that stardom is being highly engineered behind the scenes. And I think when you have something like, the Chaotic Good Project's conversation at Billboard, or, you know, when you find out that an influencer who is posting on behalf of a record label without disclosing that it's on behalf of a record label, like, I don't know, I think that that kind of confirms people's suspicion that these narratives are being highly manipulated online.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  A lot of these artists have real deal fanbases. The Rolling Stones has a real deal fanbase, I think we could say that. Even newer artists, right? Like, they do have real fanbases that didn't come from fake burner accounts. Like, even Geese, right? The band, they were at the center of the Chaotic Good controversy. And I could see how those real fans, which the band does have, right, might feel betrayed, perhaps? You know, like, there's also, like, historically been gatekeeping among indie music fans.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Like, the stereotype of a guy who's like, name five songs of theirs. Like, someone who believes in keeping some obscurity around their favorite artists, you know? Like, what's behind that impulse to keep the borders around a music community closed? And how do these kinds of campaigns interact with that culture?

• 16:19Speaker 03

  That's a great question. I mean, yeah, I think there is an instinct, particularly in indie music, like you're saying, to gatekeep or to kind of, you know, keep someone as like, a hidden secret. There is already this kind of concept of like, fake fans, even without the marketing social media layer to it, but like, the people who go to the concert because they know the big song, and they're there to take pictures and whatever. And I think that that's personally, an exclusionary and like, not very cool attitude to take towards music. I think we should let everybody enjoy music at the scale that they want to interact with it. I think that that's not cool. Like, the people who are like, name five songs, or like, if you come to this concert and you only know the hits, like, you're not cool, whatever. But it is a very pervasive culture, and I think that these kinds of campaigns might

• 17:03Speaker 03

  make people upset if like, you're trying to get tickets to go see Geese on their next tour, and they're already sold out, and there's this fear of like, oh my god, these campaigns are blowing up the band. And it's kind of like main character syndrome, because it's like, fans thinking like, it's not all people who are as invested in the band as I am.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  But I think also, people don't want to feel like they've been fooled. Like, I love Geese, and I do remember there was a moment where it felt like Geese was very, very pervasive on my algorithm. It does make you sort of question, like, oh, do I like this because I like this? Or do I like this because I'm being exposed to it every time I open an app on my phone? And all of these people that I think are cool also think this is cool? Like, it kind of makes you question your personal taste, or makes people dig their heels in a little bit, like, oh no, I was a real fan before Chaotic Good and, you know? It creates this other level of exclusion.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  You know, musician Eliza McLamb talked about this in her Substack newsletter, but what does this mean for musicians who don't have these paid creators or burner accounts, like, lobbying for their virality?

• 18:09Speaker 03

  I mean, I think it creates an even higher barrier of entry. I think for the musicians that do have access to these kind of marketing tactics, it most likely puts them in a morally difficult position. It must be difficult if you're an artist who wants to be signed to a big label, or who wants to have all these resources behind you, for it to then be normalized that like, this is how we're going to market your music. I can't imagine all artists are happy about that. And like, I think that creates its own set of complications. And then I think for the artists that don't have that, it's already a difficult industry to break into, you know? It's already inaccessible. There are all these sort of class divides within like, who is able to sustain a music career at a time when working as a musician is often not a very lucrative career?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  And even less so if you feel like, everybody else has these paid bots essentially to make them go viral and to make their music pop off, and you don't have that. I mean, I think it creates an even wider divide between like, the haves and have-nots of the music industry. And, and that's a very slippery slope, because ultimately, I don't think anyone's interested in only having a music industry where only the artists who have these massive campaigns around them are able to be successful and are able to like, flood the zone.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Even the fact that Chaotic Good would be so open about this in an interview, right? That even feels like a, we've sort of made a turn where it's like, the industry doesn't even have to, like, pretend with the audience anymore.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  It normalizes having these like, people who probably started out as actual, regular music fans, turning into billboards for these record companies, because they're just getting these offers and like, the affordability crisis, and it's easy for them to say yes.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, and I understand why they, I understand why they take the money.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it normalizes a system that is maybe not the most beneficial to the artists and like, the fans that they're looking to connect with, and is maybe not the most beneficial to a creator who genuinely loves music and wants to share music with an audience, and is now developing a relationship with a label or an agency that raises a lot of like, ethical and legal questions.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  You also talked to someone who said that it used to be more hip-hop and R&B songs that labels poured this kind of like, secret money into, and now it's country. What does that say to you?

• 20:29Speaker 03

  I think it speaks to how so many of these trends aren't accidents and they're intentional. And we should be aware, or at least approach them with some skepticism. When it seems like the trends that we are seeing in music or in other forms of art reflect a certain cultural or social agenda. The influencer that told me that, I was really shocked to hear that, like, you know, there was a big movement of like bedroom rap and protest music, especially, I mean, I'm thinking during the summer of BLM during 2020, like hip hop played such a core part of the musical scene and how we talked about music in like a racial and social context. And understanding that there's been a concerted effort from some labels to move away from

• 21:13Speaker 03

  that and towards country music, which maybe aligns with different political values and a different socio-cultural context. I think that that says a lot about the goals of this industry and like what kind of politics they're in line with. And it's shocking and I think it's concerning because I think it's easy to look at the charts and be like, wow, that's crazy that country music all of a sudden is popping off. But it's like, these things aren't necessarily happening on accident.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is, that's a lot to, that's like a lot to really chew on and a lot to think about. How are you thinking about like how this reflects some sort of where we're at with, I don't know, whatever era of the internet we're in now? To me, like what sucks is that the internet used to be a great place to find music through real people. You just followed on like, I don't know, maybe MySpace or Tumblr, definitely for me. I mean, like, oh, my gosh, blog era, blog era internet was so good.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  And this kind of Paola stuff we're talking about, it just, it seems like kind of like more dead internet theory. Like, we've discussed this idea on the show before, but for those who don't know, dead internet theory is the idea that the internet is no longer centered on organic human activity. And instead, most of the content, interactions and social media accounts on the internet are actually bots. Like, to put it plainly, dead internet theory posits that a lot of what we see online is fake, right? Fake accounts, fake posts. And that's so at odds with how I used to experience using the internet to discover music. I don't know, like, is the internet just dead? And like this, this marketing strategy is like another way to deal with that?

• 22:57Speaker 03

  It feels like it because I think to your point, Brittany, like, social media in particular used to feel so democratic and fun when it was like, you only interacted with the people that you followed. Like, I remember being on Tumblr and Twitter as like a young teenager and like making friends with other people who were like-

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  -ran fan accounts for a particular pop punk band or for One Direction or whatever. And those communities all felt like real 13-year-old girls behind their computer screens. And it just feels more and more like now so much of what's on our feeds is being programmed for us. And there's not always like a real person with intention on the other side of the screen. Like, more often than not, it does feel like it's, I don't know, a record label or a bot or a paid UGC campaign or all these other examples of things that point to dead internet theory where there's an agenda. And it's hard to say like, who is driving that agenda, but it's lost a lot of its humanity.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Hmm. I wonder, like, where do you think music discovery is going to come from next? Like, if people are skeptical of algorithms and, and now online creators?

• 24:03Speaker 03

  I feel like we're gonna see a return to the basics. Or maybe this is me being Pollyanna about this, but like, NTS radio, college radio, live music, independent communities where people know for a fact that what they're consuming is not being sponsored or influenced. Like, I'm gonna shamelessly plug NPR Music.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  I love a shameless plug. I appreciate that. NTS radio, for people who are listening who may not know what that is, can you explain NTS radio?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. NTS radio is a global radio network. They're streaming from a bunch of different cities around the world. You can tune in anytime and just hear what different like DJs and curators and artists and music fans are listening to in a bunch of different places all over the world. And it's really fun. You can kind of just drop in and like feel like you're having this experience outside of your own home, outside of your own bubble, just through your headphones. It's, it's really, really cool.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  That's really cool. Actually, I was in a, I was in a bathroom at, like, at a hotel restaurant recently. And they, for some reason, had a gigantic TV in the bathroom. And they, it was playing NTS radio. And it was like this, the most industrial sort of, it almost sounded like, it sounded like really old German techno, but whale sounds.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  It was a vibe. That's something that I don't think that a record label would pay somebody to talk about online.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  I think when you were asking earlier about like, you know, what does this mean for artists who don't have the resources? It does raise all these questions about like, what if labels don't want to invest in international artists from other parts of the world who aren't in the US? Or people who make more political music or more experimental music? Like, I think you lose so much richness and diversity if it's not something that labels necessarily want to pay for. And when you go to places like NTS or underground college radio stations or, you know, ask your friends for music recommendations. Like, I think we need to go back to making it feel real and human and organic.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  I love it. Also, like, going to the club.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, we need people in the club.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  You know, that's how people used to hear songs. Just person to person, just actually sharing music too is so nice.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think music is such a communal experience and not just when you experience it live. I feel like it means so much to share it with people. I mean, that experience you had with NTS, like, you're in the bathroom somewhere, you're in a public place and a song comes on that like catches your ear, like, that's the magic of like listening to music and discovering music and loving music. So I think we just have to like, keep our ears open and be out in the world.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Ah, just keep our ears open. I love that. Isabella, thank you so much for coming on the show. You give me so much to think about and you give me another excuse to try to go to the club in the middle of the week. So, thank you.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Thank you, Brittany. I'll see you at the club.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  That was Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, reporter for NPR Music. You can find her piece on social media, Paola, on npr.org. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Liam McBane. This episode was edited by-

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Nina Potuck.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Our supervising producer is- Cher Vincent. Our executive producer is- Barton Girdwood. Our VP of Programming is- Yolanda Sangueni. All right. That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.

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