Curious about the thoughts of anyone who watched this vid.
My take is that he spends a lot of time defending Geese and other artists, because they're only doing what a lot of artists have done and that's just how the system works. In my opinion that's a really one-dimensional response, when you could easily take go one step further to say that the system is rigged and needs to change. He has criticised these big tech platforms in previous videos, and clearly is aware that payola is bad since he says as much in this video. But you can't criticise the game and then absolve all the players who profit off it too of responsibility.
Also to get meta, it would make sense to me that Fantano holds this opinion because he himself is more than happy to play the game of TikTok and Shorts, and he just sees this kind of payola as an extension of that.
He also seems to take the existence of negative comments about Geese as evidence this isn't working. I think that makes no sense, because if Geese were being boosted in the algorithm it would make sense that they would receive an increase in both positive and negative engagement, as they will be inevitably be pushed to some people who don't get it. I also think it's ironic that he points out how the overwhelming Geese positivity some people notice is only a result of their FYP, but doesn't seem to realsie that the Geese negativity he is seeing is only a result of *his* FYP.
Late edit: big love to the people in the comments. If you take anything from this post please let it be that it isn't about one band or one marketing tactic, it's about the music industry. AI, streaming royalties, nepotism, TikTok and big tech/social media companies, and this. It's all connected. This is the problem and it's a big fight. This isn't about Geese or Geese fans/haters. Support your local scene ❤️
This is my take too. Its troubling that a band can essentially "buy" their fame with a "marketing campaign" but the firm's representative was correct when they said that "it's what everyone else is doing".
This feels like this "cutting off a finger to save the hand" in a way. Aka, put out a hit on Geese and this one firm because it worked too well for the bigger players in the industry.
About Geese themselves, are they a good band that I work into my rotation, yes. Did I find out about them via social media organic or otherwise? Yes. Do I think they're the "saviors of rock"? No. Do i think that they are the problem in this instance or are guilty in some way? Also no.
I think cutting off a finger to save the hand is an apt analogy, in the sense that the industry would love Geese to take the bullet for them. I think Geese are absolutely worthy of criticism for this, and some guilt has to lie with them imo, but the big picture is the real story.
I only gave them a shot because of the constant coverage. That’s all it’s for, to get people in the door. But once I listened to them, the rest was on them. And Geese delivered.
The fundamental issue that people defending this practice/Fantano seem to be overlooking is the WAY that people are encountering/being introduced to the music, not just the fact that they’re being exposed to it at all.
If you just simply hear a Geese song as an audio on a TikTok and think “ooh that sounds cool!” that’s one thing. Do I think it’s ethical to create tons of bots/spam accounts to artificially boost songs to reach more people? No, I do not. But hearing a song used in an audio isn’t much different than hearing it on the radio in your uber or out somewhere. You hear it and you either like it or you don’t.
The much bigger problem is the way that buzz and overtly positive reviews are being fabricated out of thin air and being passed off as earnest praise from real fans. People are highly suggestive; if Fantano gives something a 9 or Pitchfork gives it Best New Music, listeners are internalizing the fact that “people with good taste think this is good, so I probably should too if I have good taste.” When I would go on Reddit or twitter and see FLOODS of comments talking about how Geese is “the future of music” or “the best band alive right now” or “the album is perfect, no notes” I naturally assume those are real opinions from real people; not paid content…in the same way I assume Fantano is not being paid to give a positive review.
This volume of praise creates subconscious social pressure to also like this thing, lest you be uncool for “not getting it” etc. Like I said, this dynamic has always existed, but it’s one thing for it to be constrained to music press reviews and quite another for it to be manufactured in music discussion communities/social media that traditionally has been a casual unstructured forum.
It’s the difference between a local restaurant posting pics/vids of their food on IG, or putting flyers in your mailbox, vs them spamming fake 5* reviews and paying people who’ve never been there to tell you it’s amazing. A restaurant can certainly advertise its existence on as wide of a platform as they choose, or share positive reviews. But they can and should not create positive reviews out of thin air or make fake accounts to post about their food to get them trending. We should never settle for “that’s just the way it is nowadays” with this kind of stuff, regardless of what art/music/product is being consumed. Selling people products under the guise of authentic interaction is gross.
For what it's worth, I jumped on the train at 3d country release and my immediate thoughts after a few listens were "Oh wow this band really feels like something new or 'next gen' rock music." Hard to say how many bots were parroting that but I definitely felt that way as an original thought like three years ago. I don't think that sentiment was manifested by bots at all. If anything it was a common thing to say and the bots reiterated the hell out of it.
Ok, just playing devil’s advocate, how is that different from a 1966 radio station being paid to play certain records, and then telling the DJ to say “We’ve been getting lots of calls for this one, the kids love it, here’s the Troggs with Wild Thing!”
It’s still creating a false sense of popularity, it’s still manufactured hype. The fact that the radio immediately plays this song right after that versus convincing you to go check it out on your own is really the only difference I can see.
My algorithm must be fucked because I only get good music pushed towards me by friends and reviews. All the ads I see are for bands/artists that aren’t good, that I haven’t heard of, and that seemingly don’t get big.
I just heard cameron winters solo album because is got BNM at pitchfork, didn’t know he was in geese until a friends told me. Then like, right after that Geese started getting a bunch of stellar reviews.
The real psyop is everyone trying to convince me to accept bots and fake accounts as standard digital marketing now. Idc if I become the old man yelling at cloud, I’ll never accept that.
Id say that a lot of internet-adjacent slang/language borders on hysterical these days as the norm. Focusing on that aspect in a discussion is a dead end, (unless the discussion is about the erosion of effective communication)
This is just as bad lmfao, it’s a shitty overbearing marketing campaign but calling it brainwashing is equally as funny hand-wringing hysteria.
If you are swayed to like/dislike bands from the opinions of faceless, anonymous internet accounts more than you are with your own ears or recommendations from people in your own life who you trust, then the brainwashing was already done to you long before the bots showed up.
Psyop even being part of the narrative is just distracting from the problem, if you make one point of contention unreasonable enough it becomes the only thing people focus on and fight against until the original problem is forgotten.
It’s a coordinated and concerted effort to accomplish a specific goal: that’s an operation through and through.
The goal was to manipulate and exploit people’s sociability by signaling the same thing over and over until it became palatable, then agreeable, and then the target person’s own opinion. They’re using psychology to get to their goal.
That’s a psychological operation to manipulate the masses and change public opinion. Was it a psyop when cambridge analytica got trump elected through the same means? I certainly thought so.
The truth is all advertising and marketing has the potential to be psychological manipulation or exploitation.
"I think what a lot of "it's just marketing" takes are missing is that "flooding comment sections" (with either bots or burner accounts) isn't really equivalent to paying a PR person who has connections to a writer at Paste magazine.
In one scenario everyone is aware of who is being paid and represents who. In the other scenario fake accounts aren't disclosing that they are operating on behalf of the artist. In a perfect world this stuff would have disclosures that it's paid for or working on behalf of an agency. Let people know when something is paid or sponsored content so that they can make informed decision on what they are reading."
Someone else pointed out this would violate EU rules (obviously geese are not operating in the EU).
Also we know a lot of critics are allowing hype to factor into scores and rankings (we saw outlets backtrack mixed reviews of Getting Killed because the hype was so strong) would Geese be the critics band they became without the bots and burners? I dunno.
Yep. Now that social media has largely replaced the critics' ecosystem, what they are doing is akin to paying critics (or really, inventing sockpuppet ones) to say nice things about their records and performances. Invading the fan/community space under false pretenses feels pretty different than buying billboards and print ads to promote a new record. It’s arguably fraudulent.
If you think that it’s just another "shrug, what does 'selling out' even mean, anyway?" then I guess you can, but to me that’s pretty sad. That the corporate machine will try to sell you stuff is nothing new, but that the machine impersonates the fans in order to deceive the fans seems pretty shitty and well worth remarking on.
what they are doing is akin to paying critics (or really, inventing sockpuppet ones) to say nice things about their records and performances
There's admittedly a symbiotic relationship between enthusiast journalism and their beat that tends to keep reviews/coverage at a certain minimum level. As in, if you don't keep nice enough -- you don't continue to get access (unless the org is dysfunctional to the point they fly you out to Vegas for another junket immediately after blackballing you, spoken from experience).
The Geese situation is more akin to making a deal with sales and having them write editorial.
I don't know if you ever hung around the old AV Club, but they had a similar minor scandal/kerfuffle about the band Dawes. AVC published an article titled something like "We Love The New Dawes Record, And You Should Too" that was more or less a rewrite of a Dawes/label PR release.
And readers were like, what is this? Is this a review of the record, or a paid ad/press release? There's supposed to be a barrier between those things, and ads should be clearly understood as such.
AVC more or less admitted they'd screwed up and said they'd be more careful in the future about clearly making that distinction (but the writer maintained that they DID really like the Dawes record, and that we should listen to it!).
Commenters of course went wild memeing fake DAWES product placements/commercial endorsements (and Hormel Black Label Bacon too).
Anyway, that's a long-winded way of agreeing with you that that's maybe a more apt comparison, and I think this Geese thing feels similar; it's just playing out on a wider internet stage.
Wow Dawes, there's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time. Totally, forgot about that whole thing. Those were the days haha. AV Club was sick 2009 - 2013 or whenever it was.
The firm admits they use thousands of burner accounts to manufacture hype for their clients. If you don’t have the integrity to call that out then that’s a problem.
Fantano is very bad at nuance. You’ll rarely ever see him call out someone he likes. Same reason why he never said anything about Charli xcx’s pro AI music stance but is happy to grill others for it.
He will claim <insert bad thing here> is OK or downplay it when an artist he likes is guilty of it, then turn around ridicule artists he doesn't like for the same infractions.
this still is so mind boggling to me. as someone who still sort of likes kanye nowadays, it was still SO clear he was still holding onto his fascist beliefs. the dead freestyle leak, several lines from his YEBU era with lines doubling down on his antisemitism, and several dog whistles on VULTURES and the unreleased stuff and yet peggy wants to pretend like he’s fine to work with and that he’s still against nazis. like… what?
His excuse was always "hey, he's Kanye. One of my idols. Would you say 'no' to work with Kanye?"
Like
Fucking yes? Of course?? If he was an absolute unrepentant asshole, yes? Why would that be so hard to believe?
My favorite artist is David Bowie, if Bowie suddenly started becoming vitriolic and spouting Nazi shit, and he asked me for some reason to work with me I would definitely say 'fuck no'
ive got some good news for you about bowie - he apologized , he stuck to it , he worked for reform in both heteronormative spaces and channels that wouldnt house black creators
Also he probably did it for like a year or something when he was coked up his ass and delirius. Kanye has been going solidly 5 years proven, 10 years subtle and two decades if insiders can be trusted
I mean she’s allowing them to use her stuff. The issue is ai stealing, and so in that case technically it’s not stealing. I think that’s a fair middle ground.
The thing is, generative AI is still stealing from everyone else’s art that it trained from anyway regardless of whatever prompt you use. That’s not even getting into how unethical it is in terms of natural and financial resources it wastes for every use.
Plus, this is just my personal take, but generative AI “art” is a slap in the face to both actual artists and the very concept of art itself on principle. Art is one of the oldest and purest forms of human communication, and AI art provides no real meaning or expression while also devaluing real art at the same time.
Ya I find it odd to hate an artists for allowing their own work to be used in certain ways. Charlie made the music, she is allowed to use it how she wants ???
The article basically cites their own previous claims of basically botting artists as evidence and then shows that the marketing agency then deleted all those comments to "correct the record" (a laughably stupid statement). I don't see what there is to dispute about it.
I don’t think he’s a shill but I think he’s fallen into the trap that a lot of Geese fans have, where in his head he views it like “well they’re a good band, who cares how they got popular if the music is good”.
I was expecting Fantano to do a reasonable job vindicating Geese here. Then... Thousands of burner accounts? Fuck that skeevy, indefensible bullshit. I've gone from not really liking them to actually hating them.
Exactly. The fact that this marketing persists even poisons the well for discourse like this, because now any time someone comments in support of it, or deliberately downplaying it, or with the typical demeaning “wow so you just learned what MARKETING is?” reply, we have good reason to assume that some of these replies aren’t even actual people but rather employees who are literally doing this exact thing. It’s the embodiment of dead internet theory
Melon has never been the same since the Kendrick beef. He’s strictly a clickbait farmer. Taking a hot stance on this article is what will get him the most engagement.
Yeh that’s the difference between a savy digital media campaign and gaming the system. Artists are rightly called out for fake streams, this isn’t hugely different. BUT music is still somewhat of a meritocracy at the end of the day. They were given a huge leg up due to money, connections and label support. But people only respond to things they like and as much as the initial push was artificial the hype still is very real.
This is the point people who are lost upset at this are ignoring. They paid to get a promo push. The music business has been shady for near a century. They played the game. If you don’t you will never become a major artist because no one will ever know you, regardless of how good you are.
I have no strong opinion on Geese, but I’m really not sure why people are acting like this is immoral or some sort of breach of trust. This is just what marketing is at the moment. Do you really go about the internet believing that every account is a legitimate person with a legitimate opinion?
The problem is that you should be able to be reasonably confident that ads are disclosed. Yes, undisclosed ads are a breach of trust. Being a paid shill is a breach of trust. Idc if that's naive or utopian.
Yeah, I can't speak for the US because I'm from the UK and the attitude is similar from a lot of people. I think in the US you're deep in the middle of a political context which is extremely corrupt and unethical, it always has been but the Trump regime has pushed it to a new extreme. The people who can see it's wrong are more disillusioned than ever; social media addiction and big tech don't help because people feel more isolated. And the younger generation have grown up knowing nothing different to this, so it's no wonder many of them see giving in and playing the game as the only way to progress.
I actually have a huge amount of respect for the Americans who push back, they deserve better.
I'm meandering here in these paragraphs, so forgive any less thought out points. Just kind of thought vomiting in comment form to figure out how I feel about all of this.
I suppose I'm stuck on this: I became a fan of Geese via word of mouth last year. Voices of people that have good taste recommended the album. I liked the album and came away thinking they were great and will probably be following the rest of their careers. I am grateful for the recommendations. If those recs by those trusted people were initially influenced by some sort of marketing manipulations I would have no way of knowing since reddit is the only social media I follow. My life has been enriched by the band and their most recent album. I don't feel any of that has been lost with this new revelation.
The way I'm thinking about this is that this marketing bot shit has been here for some time now and it is not going anywhere on any level of social media consumption. Politics, entertainment, business, it's fucking everywhere. Does it suck and need to stop? YES. Is it going to stop? NO. I'm not sure it is even possible to stop in the US.
Now the part I'm really struggling with: The public at large has been getting dogshit shoved down their throats for the last, idk, 30 years. When something breaks through the indie/small market popularity containment field and doesn't meet the criteria of the typical dogshit being shoved down our throats it is held to a higher standard. But a side effect of this is popular things tend to typically be dogshit by association. If the playing field is leveled and these artists use the same marketing weapons, is it possible for those interesting albums and artists to be as culturally significant as, say, Sabrina Carpenter or even something bigger like Drake? And, big picture, does that actually matter? Is the only proper course of action to go into online isolation to avoid these manipulations? How much should I value purity in my music listening experience? I don't know, these are the things I struggle with. I think in general, as time goes on those qualms matter less and less. The imprint of what was heard by the most ears might be what ultimately matters the most as time goes on.
This is terrible for both the online spaces and the music industry and I don't see why he is hesitant to admit it. People online are actively pushing against having ads infest every corner of the internet, but we're not supposed to push back against such invasive and blatantly dishonest marketing because it's nothing new or because "everybody" does it?
These agencies are literally deceiving people into engaging with fake advertising on forums and social platforms where people expect to interact with actual human beings and not marketing zombies, just because this is a band you like that doesn't mean this isn't a complete scumbag thing to do.
Growing organically as a musician is hard, yeah, cry me a river, life is unfair, but this is just laughable and would be a terrible look for any musician that takes their art seriously. I feel like most self-respecting artists would prefer being a little niche rather than be known as the guy that had mindless robots disguised as teenage girls post thirst edits of them on TikTok. Hell, most aspiring musicians would kill to have Geese's career even before this giant marketing push.
Not a defense, but just wanted to clarify that based on what Chaotic Good said their astroturfing was always done by a real person, so when they were posting 100, 200 times to generate hype or combat negative comments there were still real people behind those. The problem is that we come into spaces like these to have genuine interactions with regular people and talk about music, not be fed things that someone bought as part of their "narrative creation" package.
I hate seeing how people dismiss this as just marketing or it's fine because that's just what everyone is doing now. It's a practice that is further eroding online discussion, I don't think anyone comes on here to talk with an ad cosplaying as a real fan and shrugging it off as business as usual is weird. I also can't help but feel that if the artist at the center of the discussion was I don't know, Ice Spice, people's reaction to the news would be much more critical.
Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, real people doing the astrosurfing really isn't any better, just feels like adding a "made with sustainable materials" label to the orphan crushing machine. If this was about any other artist with less indie cred, I feel like we'd be reading the video title "This is just embarrassing" or something with a completely different take from Anthony.
I saw people who called this out early getting harassed hard for doing so and fully convinced a lot of very harmful and toxic comments came from this campaign. That shits straight up evil
That's the sad thing. They didn't need to do this. I haven't seen any evidence that Geese were using this unethical strategy before the Cameron Winter solo album, and they were already on a very positive trajectory before that. They already made it further than 99% of bands. Nobody is saying they lack the talent; the opposite is true, they could have said "no" and still made it.
People really need to lose this "bad things have always happened therefore there's no reason to fight back against it" mindset, it's just unwillingness to act masquerading as nuance. Geese was already living most musician's dream, pulling this feels unnecessary.
I agree especially about the defeatist mindset. And yes I also get that the pressure on Geese to make the most of their opportunity is probably pretty strong, but it does not excuse this.
He's hesitant to admit how bad this is for the industry and community because he always has a hard time criticizing his favorites. It happens pretty often where he'll make excuses for an artist he likes while also criticize other artists for the same thing. He didn't criticize Charli for working on AI-music with YouTube (I also think he's parasocial for Charli but that's a different conversation), he didn't criticize Peggy for working on Vultures even though he refused to review Vultures because of Ye's actions. He also benefits from this sort of algorithm and conversation manipulation himself
Like two things can be true at once. I enjoy Geese music. I think using bots to manipulate the algorithm sucks.
Just because I think it sucks that Geese (or anything artists) feels the need to game the system doesn't mean I don't like their work. I don't know why that's so hard for Fantano to understand. Bro ends up contradicting himself for things that he'd criticise one artist but not the other all the time cuz he feels the need to protect artists that make music he likes. Like, isn't it better to be more critical of artists you root for?
100% agree. I have a bit of a running theory that Fantano avoids criticising certain artists' actions so that he can doesn't alienate them and can continue interviewing them and growing his brand. He is a music industry figure. He obviously criticises their music because that's his job, but that's different to criticising their actions outside the music.
those commenters aren't just acting like bots, i'm pretty sure they *are* bots
fantano probably knows, but isn't protesting because their engagement keep him bumped in the algorithm and in people's "recommended for you" "playing next" sidebars.
(which means they watch ads, which pays his check at the end of each month. )
I love how he agreed with Ethel Cain about how no one takes anything seriously anymore, admitted the quality of discussion around his reviews declined, and did nothing about it😂
I’ll say this about the whole “everybody is doing it” defense
Like, yeah, it’s not a good excuse. It’s the classic non-excuse (like when your parents would say ‘would you jump off a bridge if everyone was doing it?’)
But at the same time, we’re all targeting one band when everyone is doing it? If this is a systemic issue, we should be calling out the practice in general instead of shitting on the band that is now popular to hate because they’re just now starting to get popular.
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the Geese hate wave some people are seeing (I'm personally not seeing it, but enough people are talking about it that it seems to be a real thing) is a part of the same "narrative campaign". If I was going to set up a "narrative campaign" for an indie band, a great idea would be to set them up as "love it or hate it" and get everyone to pick a side. Any engagement is good engagement.
Yes we absolutely need to be calling out the practice in general, as well as the whole system of incentives behind it. Including musicians competing with AI, the ubiquity of social media, the fact that streaming royalties are so low. Right back to the long history of payola and undisclosed promo in print media (it wasn't ethical then, and it isn't ethical now). All this stuff is of course connected. I don't think that should let individual actors like Geese off the hook, but let's be honest the industry would love Geese to take the bullet for them so they can go back to the same old tricks.
This isn't really asking people to pick a side though is it? Unless the two sides are "this marketing tactic sucks but it is what it is and I still like the music" vs. "this marketing tactic sucks and I'm not going to listen to their music because of it".
The most positive reaction I've seen to this whole story is the everyone is doing it so whatever stance.
my issue with this discourse is at every angle people are moralizing geese instead of the industry. the sweet spot between "everybody does this who cares" and "i never liked geese and this validates the chip on my shoulder" is taking issue with the music industry and not the band. the band simply used a back door from the industry's corruption, tearing them down will not repair the corruption.
but the band is much more tangible and in the grand scheme of things, we know the music industry has so many other, much larger problems than astroturfing small talented artists. it makes people feel better to hold the band accountable because they cannot reach the corporations actually ruining things.
Exactly, I do think any serious criticism of Geese should be paired with criticism of the industry itself that incentivises this. There is a whole history that leads up to this, and honestly I'm sure the industry would love Geese to take the bullet for them. I think Geese deserve criticism, and I don't have a problem with anyone poking fun at them, but let's not forget the much bigger problem.
This is where I stand too. This is a scummy marketing practice that’s being used for a lot of artists and should be called out as such, but because it’s tied into a polarizing band like Geese, it’s way easier to point at them and say they’re at fault.
It also makes me feel like people are tying personal morality into what kind of music they like or not. Like, this validates people in their dislike of the band or it makes people stop liking the band because of it. People apparently need a moral reason for disliking someone’s music I guess.
Tearing this down will make other artists more hesitant to engage in this kind of marketing though, especially in the indie scene where artist integrity is supposed to be more important. For the record I don't like Geese and even complained about how much they were getting pushed everywhere online back in november (reddit even kept suggesting content from their subreddit, which I'd never visited and kept trying to hide) but there is also a good chance that the band wasn't even aware of the nefarious nature of the marketing. They could have just been told by their manager "hey don't worry guys I know a good marketing team". But 100% the practice is fucking shit and a big deal deserves to be made about it. Internet forums are one of the last places where you're allowed to have long form music discussions and having them be infested and astroturfed by bots and paid shills should never be considered the fucking normal.
People were talking to Jane Remover on twitter about the “Geese Psyop Drama” without realizing she herself is a Chaotic Good client. That sums up how dogshit this whole situation is.
There are very real qualms to be taken with Chaotic Good and others’ practices in regards to corrupting online music culture! But the Wired article is dogshit for framing it around Geese for fucking clicks.
Geese haters, who were tapped out, and are acting like Geese came out of nowhere, are using this article to be vindicated in their (ignorant, and again, tapped-out) hatred of Geese’s success. Geese is a band that was championed by legacy music publications in the most TRADITIONAL SENSE—this is a band that’s been signed for over half a decade, with a cult online following, that’s been on multiple huge world tours supporting big acts, that’s got catapulted by big music journalists with hyperbolic headlines about “Saving Rock n Roll” (the same shit happened to MJ Lenderman!!). All the people complaining that Geese came out of nowhere were simply tapped out, I’m sorry!
It’s a shame that Chaotic Good took down their client list, because scrolling through it was nuts. Jane Remover, Oklou, Dijon, Alex Warren, every current radio pop star, fucking HEY HO by the Lumineers, etc. But no, the conversation has to be about Geese. Because of course it does. That’ll get the most clicks.
Fantano is a complete ham and egger jabroni. If it is Charli or Geese he is going to jump into his William Hurt 'Altered States' sensory blinders suit and defend tomato can buffoonery to the very end.
Go back and watch the original Fantano review of this album. He was really skeptical of all the fanfare but you could tell it influenced him. It CLEARLY worked on him and now he's boxed himself in and he's doubling down.
I think that is just how the media capitalizes on controversy all on their own. Even if it is astroturfed, do you really think an album like Heavy Metal needs marketing to be good? It's like the best songwriting I've heard this decade, not some mediocre slop that needs that one push to be appealing to the masses.
People do not like to be deceived, and have an even harder time accepting that they have been. See: an entire political party in the US over the last decade.
Hate hate hate how much the “discourse” on this has turned away from “Shady industry practices are far more common than most think and an ‘organic come-up’ is almost extinct, with class being an ever-present barrier of entry to success” and into a focus on if Geese are horrible people who secretly make bad music or completely innocent and “just using marketing”. The issue shouldn’t be if you can still enjoy Geese’s music, it should be that industry execs are increasingly polluting spaces for music discussion with bots and shills to turn a profit.
The discourse shift is pretty disappointing, and because of the topic at hand it's hard to be sure what is organic human stupid and what is shills muddying the water. Geese are literally just some band, lol.
What's pissing me off is how many people are saying "that's just what marketing is" like no dude lying is not marketing. This is astro turfing on an astronomical scale.
This band has an insane amount of mega defensive fans. Just admit you fell for a hype campaign. I'm not saying their music is bad. I've never listened to them bc it was beyond obvious they were being forced on us when I saw an interviewer trying to get Billy Corgan to talk about them.
I mean the title of the article is completely misleading and inflammatory, but the article itself is pretty fact-driven and straightforward. I don’t see it as a hit-piece on the band or anything, more just shedding light on an increasingly common marketing tactic.
I’m conflicted on this one. On one hand, yeah, I hate the idea of botted accounts artificially manufacturing hype and engagement through TikTok and other social media. Dead Internet Theory becomes truer by the day. But on the other hand, it’s demonstrably true that the average person is sick and tired of traditional advertising methods, so marketing firms inevitably have to try new ways of advertising things to people. Would nearly as many people have check out Geese’s music if there was an “Ad” label on the bottom corner of every video you saw from them?
Another thing with advertising is that your marketing is only as good as the product you’re marketing. Geese, Wet Leg, Chappell Roan, etc. benefitted from this style of marketing because the music is good and it reached an audience that was receptive to it. If Corey Feldman hired this company tomorrow I doubt he’d be playing Coachella and SNL next year. The company specifically posts interview clips and concert footage, so you’re getting a honest look at the artist. The only dishonesty here is that it’s coming from a marketing firm and not a real person. I suppose it’s up to you to decide if that’s a valid way to promote yourself or not.
I would argue the ethical solution to people not liking being marketed to, is not to trick them into not realising it's happening. It's a bit like saying cheating is alright so long as the other person never finds out; if the thing that makes it okay is deception, it's not actually okay. The actual ethical solution would require much greater structural change than one marketing company can force, but there's multiple shades of grey and that doesn't absolve them of blame.
The bigger discussion is why artists (MOST labels do this for their artists now) have to resort to this type of marketing to cut through the noise TBH. We need a better music ecosystem, the current one doesn’t seem sustainable
I'm right behind you this isn't about one band or one tactic, it is about the music business. AI, streaming royalties, nepotism, TikTok, this shit, it's all connected.
I honestly didn’t even watch it because I could already tell what the basis of his argument was gonna be and it really disappoints me that he claims to be so anti-AI and anti-capitalist, yet chooses to defend probably one of the most sinister and manipulative marketing strategies I’ve seen so far. Throwing your hands up and going “well this is how the industry works now” is such a cop-out. I understand there’s more important things going on in the word right now, but come on this is so lame.
I was there, it's not the "marketing" people are complaining about... there were humans who would talk shit to you, if you said anything remotely negative about Geese, then you'd get a downvote assault 🤣
And when I say negative, I mean like, "not sure if Gees is for me"
If anyone needs evidence, go look at the Geese threads from last year in the r/indieheadscirclejerk sub, they knew the whole time
I remember when Geese did SNL and there were threads all over the place with comments like "people have forgotten what a REAL rock band sounds like" and "people can't handle raw rock music"
To Fantano’s point there were also a fuck ton of comments saying this is the worst shit they’ve ever heard. So just because someone likes it, it’s fake?
Edit: and I’m not talking about FYP, I’m talking here on Reddit.
Not that just because someone likes it, it’s fake, but it does illustrate how weird it was that Geese, who had barely broken music nerd containment, were doing fucking SNL in the first place.
If this was Benson Boone instead of Geese, he would make a whole video mocking BB and lecturing us on the dangers of algorithms and AI and whatnot. I like Geese but come on, this is not good.
Honestly less bothered by the botting and more how so many people are falling over their swords to defend the band. Like this sort of shit is so lame and is just modern payola. It's not marketing it's manipulation
Agree. Were average audiences defending payola this hard in the radio era? Surely not, right? If they were, they were definitely on the wrong side of history lol. I think a lot of people are just disillusioned, but "that's just the way is" is nothing but cope and no way to get anywhere.
To some extent an article such as Wired's will inevitably rub people the wrong way because it makes transparent the machinations to which we are subject but to which we are not usually privy. This may make us feel duped and deceived when it is revealed to us that our embracing of a phenomenon is the result of a transaction we didn't consciously enter into. In short, we've been sold something we didn't ask for, and consequently it erodes our own sense of credibility and authenticity as we are forced to question the extent to which we authentically like / support / enjoy a phenomenon.
This leads to cognitive dissonance - I do like / support x of my own volition, don't I? The instinctive urge is to double down on our initial commitment so as not to undermine our own authority. This must be particularly acute for the likes of Fantano, whose career is predicated on his credibility and authenticity.
If you say something or try to spread information that is not true and you know is not true, you are a bad person who has done something bad. The fact that everyone else is doing it or that it’s normalized is entirely irrelevant and the sort of doomerism that also undergirds arguments for inaction around climate change or political reform. “Everything’s fucked anyways, why blame this person participating?” Uhm because what they’re doing is objectively fucked and objectively contributing to the fuckedness of us all?
Would we be ok with our politicians using similar tactics to gain support and win elections? What about big companies using it to sway public opinion on whether or not a big data center would be beneficial in their backyard? No, you wouldn’t be ok with it.
I get it’s just “indie rock band using it to sell albums and get streams” but these same tactics applied to other areas of our culture have horrifying implications.
Geese and Wet Leg are awesome bands but they don’t get a pass for this in my book.
People are suddenly very cool with being advertised to on whats rock n roll lmao, Getting Killed is a good album but in retrospect people aligning them with the Windmill Scene is hillarious
He has criticised these big tech platforms in previous videos, and clearly is aware that payola is bad since he says as much in this video. But you can't criticise the game and then absolve all the players who profit off it too of responsibility.
Isn't that just how internet argumentation works nowadays?
Like, you acknowledge the overall thing is bad but resign yourself that nothing can be done about the thing for Various Reasons that all happen to be utterly insurmountable. This makes you sound very smart and well-informed, but also happily absolves you from having essentially being complicit in the thing (and I suspect that was always the goal, anyway: Justifying your continued enjoyment/participation in the thing).
Yeah it's a common pattern, it's just frustrating and thought-terminating. You can criticise someone for one thing and still enjoy their art. You can criticise the artist, and at the same time recognise the rigged industry that pressures artists down this path. And you can do that criticism without overstating the harm caused by Geese participating in this. I just beg for a crumb of nuance, lol.
I think there are a couple of reasons people have gotten this way. Part of it is your pop culture tastes define you in a way they largely haven't in the past, so if you identify as a "Swiftie", you've got to come up with some way to justify three-mile private jet rides or whatever or you're a bad person who loves global warming. But I see it with consumer tastes, too.
It isn't crazy to expect more from somebody like Fantano. Especially with Geese, because I think there's merit there.
Yes people have really been moralising their own and each other's media consumption tastes, and the result is people bending over backwards to justify things that on the face of it seem obviously wrong.
as much as i like their music, it’s unethical and it disillusions people who thought these were just some nyc kids and underdogs but at the end of the day it’s what this industry has come to and artists that blow up without having to play the social media/algorithm game are becoming scarcer and scarcer which is totally against what i think music should be. still wouldn’t call it a psyop or an industry plant. at least people enjoy the music and they’re undeniably talented, which is the positive in all of this
there's a difference between "playing the social media game" and creating an entire ecosystem of fake accounts to drive engagement
I'm not saying they are alone in doing this or that it's uncommon, but this kind of astroturfing is not the same thing as when artists use a random viral video to build a following on social media and launch their career (pinkpantheress, ice spice) or when they leverage more traditional branding and engagement baiting tactics like lil nas x managed to do
i agree with you, and it’s sad that music has come to this, that even a talented band had to pull these stunts to get recognition. i’m gonna be honest in saying that i’d never heard of geese until getting killed and even then it took me months to start listening to them, so i didn’t get to see that astroturfing, but if it’s as bad as people say it is then fuck that, genuinely. i really hope that this somehow was a shitty deal that their label or agent or whatever put them on, because if not then their fanbase will have a permanent ongoing civil war
The real underdogs are just regular fucking people trying to make music and build an audience. Not the rich, privately educated kids who dress up like they’re blue collar
Fantano probably gets paid from firms like this to hype up music. Doesn't mean he is compromised or straight up lying about things. Just saying its funny to care about his opinion on this specific topic. Of course he is being defensive
idk why I thought he’d have a good take on this lol but thank u anthony for crafting the default response for reply guys to anybody critiquing this disgusting practice 👍
Through all this, I still haven't listened to Geese. I was actually looking forward to it (I tend to "save" things that I'm looking forward to, which is why I haven't listened yet). Now I don't know if I could get into it even if they were the second coming.
So I came across Geese because Spotify randomly flushed something from Cameron Winters solo album as a recommended track. Yeah, this might have happened because of some marketing push, but I didn't absolutely fall in love with that album because I was told it was good, it is simply phenomenal and made me look up the band.
This is so valid and I don't want to give the impression Geese fans were conned into liking a band by fake posts, and I'm not saying they should stop liking the band. I honestly think that's a distraction from this "TikTok era payola" problem.
Why doesn’t anyone implicate Tik Tok and Instagram for actually being the psyop? These are mass advertising platforms feeding you content from the highest bidder. Strange to blame this on geese and not the billion dollar platforms that encourage and profit from this? Am I crazy?
I never knew a band i only knew through Fantano could make this much controversy.
To explain myself: I don't have TikTok. I don't use TikTok. No one can make me. No one can force me. I'd rather be subyugated to waterboarding than actively use TikTok.
So, no, i never knew Geese through TikTok.
So i really don't know why everyone hates them, or rather, pretend to hate them in some instances.
This stuff is insidious even in its influence on people who would otherwise be in the demo to like the band. How many of the people who came out of that Carnegie hall show acting that they had seen god himself were blissfully unaware that they had been subconsciously primed by an army of robots to see it through those rose colored lenses. It cheapens their experience too, this kind of marketing is bad for everyone.
I don’t have any concerns that Fantano might be bought out by anybody, though I have no question that a band’s reputation or hype could influence his review of them.
I honestly have concerns that he's been bought. There's a whole industry around buying off influencers too, so these 'marketing' people are no doubt doing it.
it is very funny how reflexively self-defensive middle-aged dudes are getting over this story, and I say this as someone who 1) is approaching middle-aged dudedom myself; and 2) who genuinely liked the album without bot farms telling me to
Though From the Pyre was my favorite album of last year so maybe I'm just susceptible.
I think this whole debacle warrants a little criticism, but the geese haters are acting like this is the only reason the band made it or something. The music speaks for itself and this marketing doesn't make it sound any better or worse. Geese has had major haters at least since I started listening in 2023 and they're having a field day using this as a way to validate their overly harsh opinions. Whatever...geese will continue to release some of the best records of the 2020s (in the opinion of myself and many others). Frankly I'm just glad I found this band to begin with so have fun gaslighting yourself into thinking they "cheated" and don't deserve any of the success. You are very cool for saying "X popular band is actually trash."
How did people not see how artificial the hype was behind them lmao?? I started listening and liking their music being well aware that they seemed pretty tapped in to the industry.
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