Holy crap! You see the band “Cod Fish Diaries”, they are blowing up!!
Well, are they? This topic frequently generates questions from ranging from “Are those views real?” to “Are they paying to look bigger?” to “Should I buy followers for my band?”.
For those that don’t know, many bands across the globe, primarily original bands, use a strategy to pay for views, likes, followers, gigs and more. And, it’s ok. It’s a tough industry and sometimes you’ve got to spend some money to hopefully make some.
This article provides a breakdown of different growth strategies as well as the advantages and disadvantages.
Organic Growth
Organic social media growth means naturally building a following through genuine content creation, fan interaction, and word-of-mouth marketing, allowing your audience to grow authentically over time based on real interest in your music and brand.
Purchased Growth
Purchased growth involves paying services to artificially inflate your follower numbers using fake accounts, bots, or inactive profiles to create an immediate appearance of having a larger following.
It’s important to note that while many immediately discredit bands who “pay” for engagement, it’s a strategy used throughout the industry. Some may call it “cheating,” whereas others consider it a “cheat sheet.” Although compelling data and experience suggest bands should not utilize any paid model, it’s certainly present across the industry.
Here is the breakdown of each approach:
Organic Growth
Advantages
1. Authentic Engagement: Real fans interact with your content, which leads to a higher likelihood of merchandise and music purchases. This type of growth provides genuine feedback on your music and content, unlike strange comments from overseas workers. The authentic engagement also contributes to better concert attendance and word-of-mouth promotion.
2. Algorithm Benefits: Platforms favor accounts with authentic engagement and can flag accounts with sporadic increases. The benefits to the algorithm lead to better reach for future posts, higher chances of appearing in “Recommended” sections, and more accurate analytics for audience targeting.
3. Industry Credibility: Labels and promoters can spot authentic followings. It’s easy to see who is paying versus who is authentically getting engagement, which leads to better opportunities for partnerships, sponsorships, stronger negotiating positions for deals, and genuine industry connections.
Disadvantages
1. Time Investment: Building a following requires consistent content creation and regular engagement with followers, and it can take months or years to build a substantial following.
2. Resource Intensive: The process demands creative energy and planning, all while maintaining gigs and creating music. It requires real skill in content creation (photos, videos, etc.) and ultimately may lead to additional advertising expenses. This is one of the reasons some bands are hiring social media managers.
Purchased Growth: The Quick Fix?
Advantages
1. Immediate Results: You get an instant boost in follower count and quick appearance of social proof. It can help overcome the “empty room” effect and potentially attract real followers through perceived popularity (lemming effect).
2. Cost Efficiency: The approach offers predictable expenses with guaranteed output. This requires virtually no need for constant content creation and involves lower initial time investment.
Disadvantages
1. Platform Risks: Account suspension, termination, and shadow banning are all risks with purchased followers. This leads to many negative side effects such as reduced organic reach, potential blacklisting from promotional features, and more.
2. Quality Issues: You’ll see low or no engagement rates with obvious fake profiles. Many of the comments appear in broken English, and bot accounts often get purged, damaging account analytics (making it easier to identify what’s real).
3. Industry Reputation: The risk of being exposed for fake followers is significant and can lead to loss of credibility with real fans. It becomes difficult to secure genuine partnerships, and you risk potential backlash.
4. Financial Impact: Growing and promoting a band is expensive. Significant money can be spent on non-converting followers, which leads to potential loss of real fan investment. These actions may lead to resentment and wasted advertising spend on fake audiences.
My opinion
Save your money and invest it in your product, it will continue to pay dividends. For most bands, organic growth is not only the best approach but also the most affordable. If you choose the paid model, doing it properly becomes expensive.
Many bands purchase engagement for one platform, like YouTube, but fail to maintain consistency across other social platforms which can quickly be questioned and lead to lack of trust from fans and industry (there is another article on here about lying to your fans BTW). For example, a video might receive 200,000 views within a week but show no corresponding followers, comments, or posts on Facebook or other platforms. If they do have comments, they are usually broken English or have no real context to the post. Within a week, the video receives no additional views, and other content shows no engagement but the band may be out thousands of dollars.
The problem I see is that all the data is available for those who know how to get it and when it comes to business, integrity is key. Investors mindsets can quickly go from wanting to invest to the thought of deception which is not good for the band or the industry. Mind you, buying market share has been around forever but I guess my point is that the data was not there to show where things were being manipulated. Fast forward to today, you can literally graph where manipulation occurs which makes the risk is much higher now in my opinion.
Here is what a paid engagement looks. This data is freely available and used within industry circles. Notice the spikes.
Here is an example of paid video views. This is where things can get expensive to maintain. If one video gets 200k views, it would be expected that subseqent videos get the same. If the video is removed, set to private..etc, those views are removed from the graph as seen in the negative spike.
Conclusion
While purchasing growth might seem tempting for quick results, the risks and long-term disadvantages typically outweigh the short-term benefits. If you have lots of money, it may be a strategy and it’s actually used by record labels as we speak to sort of jump start artists. However, building an organic following takes more time and effort but creates sustainable success and real connections with fans—the true currency of the music industry.
For bands serious about their career longevity, investing in organic growth while utilizing legitimate promotional tools offers the best path forward. Remember, social media success should ultimately translate to real-world results: streams, sales, and concert attendance. Only genuine followers can provide these outcomes.