I’m on the fence about this Geese situation. Yes, there’s always been ads and marketing for music, and some of it has been shady. Sub Pop milking demand by pressing a small amount of Mudhoney records is just marketing. Pretty small scale and not unethical at all. I used to get their mailed newsletter back then, and I quite enjoyed their jovial, half-joking grandiose ad-speak. People still selling physical media are absolutely ruled by the FOMO/limited edition model, and I can’t be mad at it.

I don’t know that Geese does much for me, but it is refreshing to see an actual rock act even be talked about at this scale in this day and age. Marketing and advertising in the digital age is a wildly different beast than the days when people listened to radio, bought singles and albums, watched videos, or variety shows and television, and read magazines, so it’s going to use new techniques. That said, Chaotic Good admitting they’re using a bot army is questionable. Bots are in theory not allowed by social media platforms, and are actually illegal in many places. What they’re doing is maybe beyond shady/unethical, and more on the illegal side.

The bigger issue, that David Lowery from CVB and Cracker has pointed out: are they also using bots to goose Spotify and other streaming network plays? They haven’t admitted it, and there’s no evidence of it, but bots and slop are rampant on streaming, especially Spotify. The money to be distributed to artists is very finite. If music ad firms like Chaotic Good are using bots to drive listens on Spotify, they’re actually stealing money from other artists, who are already feeling the pinch of streaming income for a million other reasons (AI creations favored in playlists, Taylor Swift demanding more money so smaller artists getting cut out, etc.).