Team,
I read a Substack a couple of days ago about some devious and sneaky music marketing and PR tactics that infuriated me and I wanted to share my thoughts on it.
I hope you find this illuminating and insightful and thank you to words from eliza for inspiring it.
xxC
“All you need is for one person to think you’re cool, and you’re in. Everyone else will be scared to question it.” - Never Been Kissed, 1999
I read this article this week ( along with thousands of other people) about the devious tactics employed by a music marketing firm called Chaotic Good.
Since that article popped off, Chaotic Good has updated its website to obscure many of its clients, as well as remove its “Narrative Campaign” offering from its website.
What is a Narrative Campaign, you might ask?
(Or I might ask, using a very cliche rhetorical device…)
If you were scrolling TikTok in April of 2024 you might remember that approximately one out of every three TikToks was of Chappell Roan performing at Coachella. They all included bolstering captions and comments like “Absolutely Killing It” and “Baby Girl ATE,” and… I dunno… other Gen-Z ways of saying that she was really good and worthwhile.
Importantly, I had never heard of Chappell Roan before this, but subsequently I knew that Chappell Roan was an incredible talent and the next big thing in pop. After all, EVERYONE (it seemed) was talking about Chappell Roan.
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“Man, I gotta listen to this Chappell Roan person!” I thought.
This is what a narrative campaign does. It floods social media with hundreds of fan accounts, and systemizes the liking and the commenting to push and control a particular narrative.
(BEFORE YOU COME FOR ME I HAVE NO EVIDENCE THAT CHAPPELL ROAN HIRED THIS FIRM, I’M JUST USING IT TO ILLUSTRATE HOW I BECAME AWARE OF, AND ENAMORED WITH, CHAPPELL ROAN IN 2024).
To quote the founder of Chaotic Good in a billboard interview last month…
"All opinions are formed in the TikTok comments — which is a reminder to us of what we can help with. I don’t know if this will make anyone feel better, but a lot of what we do on the narrative side is controlling the discourse. Most people see a video or something about an album that came out, and that first comment they see becomes their opinion…”
We see this all the time in politics and the news media and we’ve all gotten rightly skeptical of the narratives that are being pushed. It’s time to bring this skepticism to pop culture and music as well…
BECAUSE EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET IS FAKE
Like I said, I don’t have any evidence that Chappell Roan’s team hired Chaotic Good, but I know Geese’s team did and out of nowhere last summer they became everywhere.
Which is to say that, like it or not, our opinions and tastes on music can be more easily manipulated than we might recognize.
This is because..
-
Hype compounds exponentially, and when you don’t have organic hype you can fake it with a big budget and dummy bot accounts!
(THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!)1
The mere exposure effect means that a large predictor of whether or not you like a particular song is directly attributable to how often you hear it.
…ahem…ahem…
Artists with big teams and big labels and big budgets know this, and can hire hundreds of people to leave comments, or make videos sharing and hyping a particular song or performance.
For some reason, most people seem to associate internet comments and commenters with an inherent legitimacy and trustworthiness that they absolutely do not deserve:
That’s really nice for those big artists to be able to do this. They are literally white-knuckling the internet to make people care about them.
But for most of us indie artists, (if we never slept or ate or looked away from our phones for even a second) we might be able to summon the grit and gumption it takes to make hundreds of burner fan accounts, and coordinate their posting and commenting efforts to trigger an algorithm into believing “something is brewing” long enough and often enough to generate enough fake hype to create real hype.
I will not be doing this, but Lil Nas X did and he broke “Old Town Road” that way.
If you feel up to doing this, please by all means, report back.
I, however, will take a different approach which is to spread awareness of how our tastes are being controlled and manipulated.
It is my hope that we all can learn to better recognize the sinister marketing bots in action, and separate their conclusions and opinions from our own!
….and thus, this problem will take care of itself….
That is my purpose in writing this piece today, but I also want to pay tribute to the authors who inspired it which brings me to…
MANDATORY FURTHER READING:
The Genius Reddit Campaign That Launched Lil Nas X’s Career - Medium, August 23, 2021
When Everything is Fake, What’s the Point of Social Media - Time Magazine, October 20, 2025
LASTLY, HERE IS SOME REAL ORGANIC HYPE ON MY NEW RECORD THAT I DID NOT PAY FOR!
May you find it trustworthy and persuasive…but please…do make up your own mind…
“Her music is both groundbreaking and familiar at the same time, and that is a rare combo these days. Her vocals are warm, her lyrics expressive, and her message is incredible.” Chattanooga Pulse, April 1, 2026
“In her ten track debut album, Caroline offers something truly special: an escape into a whimsical wonderland that leaves you real life confidence and inspiration.” Why Are You So Quiet, March 26, 2026
“Listening to it now and it's so awesome!” - someone on Reddit from the Bandcamp Promotion Thread
“Nice work! It’s not my style but it’s quality work. Sounds great!”- someone else on the Reddit bandcamp thread2
“Most of my songs are about confidence and empowerment, and I wrote them to inspire that in myself, as well as to give it to other people.” - Me, last week.
Currently Angine De Poitrine are everywhere, and while I can appreciate their novelty and the true human-ness of the music that they make, I can’t help but be a little skeptical of the internet’s “THE NEW SAVIOR OF MUSIC” reaction. Personally, I can listen to Angine De Poitrine for about five minutes, but after that it becomes a bit repetitive and grating to me.
I really appreciate that someone who doesn’t even like the kind of music I make took the time to comment and tell me they thought it was still worthwhile and artistically valuable. Or maybe it was a bot, who knows.