The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Musicians in the dock for buying likes, views and followers

Author

By John Glenday, Reporter

March 18, 2013 | 1 min read

Musicians have been singled out by a new report for artificially boosting their social media stats by buying ‘likes, views and followers’ to inflate their apparent online popularity.

It follows an explosion in the number of firms offering to provide YouTube views, Twitter followers and Facebook likes, often for as little as £30.

Recently some unscrupulous social media users have even been buying comments to add a further layer of authenticity to their online presence.

Data monitoring firm Next Big Sound, claims that it has drawn up a list of artists it believes have resorted to employing such nefarious tricks and will publish them later this year in its report.

Social media is becoming an increasingly important tool for the discovery of emerging talent with the likes of Justin Bieber and Conor Maynard securing wider fame after first gaining popularity on YouTube.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pointed out that artificially skewing their stats contravened their terms of service with sanctions imposed likely to mean the deletion of ill-gotten followers or even the termination of the account itself in egregious cases.

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +