A n important data monitoring firm is poised to go all Wikileaks on us and publish a "name and shame" list of music artists who are believed to have bought thousands of YouTube views and/or Facebook "likes" and Twitter followers. Such social media manipulation increases an act's perceived popularity and can do wonders in terms of record company attention, selling live show tickets and shifting units.
Next Big Sound intends to release the list in the near future, and it's rumoured that there are some surprising and familiar names on it. There will be a concurrent look at a number of firms – frequently used by the music industry – that can provide manufactured YouTube views and so forth. Such is the level of sophistication that you can actually buy favourable comments that run under the YouTube video, thus making it all look more authentic and fan driven.
Next Big Sound specialises in gathering information on daily physical and online music consumption around the world, and is in a position to know when an artist suddenly gets online “heat”. According to the company, the going rate for buying in 10,000 views for a YouTube video is just £30.
With a lot of new talent now being discovered via social media, it’s no surprise that such unscrupulous – if not illegal – behaviour is being used to get new acts to the top. In addition, a number of big acts are alleged to use such means to artificially grow their profile.
Social media’s impact on the music industry is still in its “Wild West” days and there’s an awful lot of making it up as it goes along. Companies such as Next Big Sound, which is all over online data, are becoming serious players. Artist discovery and development are the lifeblood of the industry, and data analysis removes much of the guesswork and brings a sheen of science to all those numbers tumbling around the interweb.
Next Big Sound has found that musicians who gain 20,000 to 50,000 Facebook fans in the space of one month are four times more likely to hit the one million mark. It is believed that the company can predict album sales to within a 20 per cent accuracy range for most artists – forearming record labels as regards marketing spend, etc.
As always, though, the industry is dragging its heels on data analysis and prediction. The old lags still believe “good ears” are the key to music discovery and development. That was fine in the Tin Pan Alley days, but now it’s all about getting online heat. And knowing how that works is crucial.
This is why the process is being abused. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all emphasise that artificially inflating a music act’s popularity through bought-in views, “likes”, etc, is a direct contravention of their terms of service and can get an act thrown off their pages. But this is a very difficult area to police.
Facebook routinely culls spammers – after the last one, some of the most popular music artists on their site showed a significant drop in their “likes”. If Next Big Sound is as good as its word and “out” those acts that have been illegally loading the social media dice, expect regulation of this problematic area to follow.
