Viral Artist or Industry Plant

Feature Story

Earned or Paid?

Have you ever had an artist who felt like they happened upon you? They aren’t someone you would ever choose to listen to, yet, they are everywhere. Your social media, your music news, top of all the charts, seemingly coming from nowhere to superstardom and sold-out tours?

Behind every perfectly undone curl, every slightly open top button, and every bashful public appearance is a team of hundreds. PR teams, social media teams, fan-crowds, and the backing of huge piles of cash from record labels.

But how did it happen? How are today’s stars going from obscurity to international tours, seemingly missing the groundwork of small venues, no ticket sales, and low-quality social media posts?

Are we living in a time when there are more industry plants than organic successes? How can we tell the difference?

And do we even have time to care about it? 

Blurred Lines

It has become difficult to tell what a breakout, hard-earned success is, and what a backstage strategy is. Going viral can happen to Sandra down the road, just as much as it can happen to musicians.

Viewers decide who is interesting and fun to watch… most of the time.

But occasionally, it is hard not to ask ourselves, “Have I found this artist, or have they found me? Is this orchestrated or is it organic?”

An artist explodes and becomes the trending sound on TikTok. Within a week and 92 million plays, they have a record deal. Now, they are on every editorial playlist, on playlists they have no business in, and are at the top of several charts.

Old Formula

Years of small venues, small gigs, no ticket sales & $4 tickets, bootleg home-printed merch, burning CDs or mixtapes, one car, five people, all the instruments, and hoping to run into A&R. Moving on slightly, mailing CDs to DJs and music magazines, inviting radio show hosts to your live show, networking in hardmode all for the big break.

Newer formula? Sure, with the introduction of the internet, the ability to upload music to pirate sites, MySpace, online radios, and email EPKs. All that, in combination with the no-pay tour.

Now? It can almost feel too perfect, especially when in interviews, there is no mention of the time they’ve put ahead of a deal. Highly coordinated TikTok clips are seeded by influencers who get paid for the placement, and one single track can be found on all platforms. Shiny new artist profiles with no backstory - just a polished look and one overplayed track. Instant industry support, editorial playlist inclusion, and huge press coverage.

Almost too perfect? You might even have a few artists in mind right now.

Same.

Is 'Industry Plant' an Insult Now?

Well, they’re not nice and might even be fighting words in some places. What does it even mean? We’re talking about artists or bands that are marketed to us as a very DIY, grassroots ‘indie’ act. The bit we aren’t seeing and they want to keep under wraps is that they already have investors, managers, and a major label onboard. The big money wheels are turning.

One way we can see this is because they clearly have extensive promotion budgets. The cost of touring is phenomenal, but their first tour is massive, going to all the largest stadiums globally?

Math isn’t mathing.

Their brand collaborations, co-writing work, and track features are beyond what most new acts can achieve.

Are we saying the support is the shady part? Not at all. 

The performance of being a bedroom breakout, but the record label has been working on this highly orchestrated viral explosion; the deceptive marketing is the shady part.

Marketing is their job; how they do it should be transparent. Big corporations are sneaking people into subcultures (indie music and more) to monetize, which is smelly.

Note: Manufactured pop stars and industry plants are not the same. The label makes manufactured pop artists from the get-go, sculpting the image, the music, the songs, and everything from top to bottom. Groups are formed with the sole intention of selling music. No deception required.

It Slaps, It Bangs

Unfortunately, even though we are bombarded with this random new artist, the music tends to be catchy, and those little plants make some earworms. With Industry Plants, they have the passion and talent; they just had a lot of help to get to our ears, long before they might’ve otherwise.

It’s all a clever marketing machine sold to us as a spontaneous breakthrough. The music is rarely bad, but the narrative is all fake. Finding this out can be a killer for some, and listeners will skip and block the artists.

For others? If the music is good, it is good, and that is the end of it.

Ultimately, the ‘industry plants’ enjoy what undiscovered artists, who are doing it the hard way, can only dream of.

The Slow Burn

Not every artist we listen to will be part of that super machine so early on. Many still run local gigs, pushing self-released EPs, and use sites like Ditto. They’ll be hand-printing t-shirts, using a day job to pull some budget together, and when they get added to a playlist? No one paid for it.

Typically, they’ll also have a verifiable backstory, not to mention years of social media posts documenting how they got to where they are.

Is one better than the other? No. Not really. The deception behind them doesn’t change the enjoyment of the music; if it is your jam, it is your jam. And that is the bottom line.

But we love a good backstory, think Ed Sheeran, busking, and sofa surfing, now selling out stadiums.

I can’t explain it… (so, don’t)

The problem comes from the fans’ higher demand for authenticity. Simply because music is tied to self so deeply (just like we spoke about last week), when an artist you love has a ‘fake’ story rather than an artist who worked for it and is outed as a ‘fraud’, it feels odd to support it.

Or, the flip side, something is popular and you don’t like it, so you head to a forum and find other people who say, ‘hey, they are an industry plant’ (because they do not like said artists and can’t understand their success either), and that satisfies your need to validate the thing you don’t like…

Saying ‘personal taste, I can’t explain it’ is the authenticity you’re looking for here.

Not liking something is valid.

Letting personal taste cloud judgment happens. It also becomes more interesting if you consider that you might not be the target market.

You see an artist in their biggest boom, but missed all the marketing efforts until they hit the big time, because you were never their target. To you, it’ll look like they went from nothing to everything. To OG fans, they have seen the rise in progress.

Is it a problem that needs solving? To some degree, sure. We don’t need to be lied to about artists; we like them or don’t, and their indie roots don’t have much bearing on that.

We are marketed to 9000 times a day and have a good nose for frauds and fakes now. When record labels realise we are fervent about new music, new artists, and things to relate to and don’t need the faux-authenticity, we’ll all be happier.

And then we won’t ever need to say the words ‘industry plant’ again.

Thoughts? We’d love to hear them - drop a comment.

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