You can always trust data.

Last week Swedish radio took off their Digilist, the top list over most streamed songs. This after a couple of weeks with rumors around cheating. Then an artist did a experiment and showed in a big newspaper how easy it was to buy 100 000 streams in a two week period.

To be honest, I don’t know why this comes up right now. Already in 2013, I knew about some serious cheating done to both Itunes and Spotify. My guess is that this is because the cheating has escalated so much that even the majors are beaten in the game.

“You can trust data”, was Jay Frank's comment. And was said during Billboards new prize The Jay Frank Award to honor a digital music pioneer. And I would have loved to have a discussion with Jay around this situation, I still miss those talks. We had them before, so I somehow know the answer. When the Bulgarian guy was cheating a couple of years ago, we had that discussion. Jay just laughed and said, it’s like pointing a finger against a lonely guy with a handgun while you have twenty-five super big cannons shooting in the background.

We both knew how much the majors were cheating. We all know they did it on a big scale and with different methods. When some creative person did it, well then Spotify acted. Neither Jay nor I approved of the cheating. Instead, Jay looked on a tool that was genuine to get real listeners and real fans and build Digmark a PR service to get playlisted in real playlists.

What happened two years ago inside Spotify, nobody knows. Suddenly all human playlisters jumped off. Everything became algorithm-driven. And it seems like o no one reacted on cheating. I spoke to several distributors that said the same. Less notice of cheating coming from Spotify. And we saw more and more unknown artist just sail on to the charts. All this time no one said anything, so my puzzle is why know?

So, can we trust data? Jay would have laughed at this one as well. Yes, you can. Already now there are several services that can measure data from several points. Look on post a couple weeks ago around that we need a new top chart. Like I wrote there things are ongoing. If you cheat on your numbers on one field, let’s take Spotify as an example, other figures give it away. Your Facebook/Instagram followers are intact and won’t move. Or your streams on YouTube won’t move. And your name is not mentioned in social media. Yet your Spotify streams are on full rise!

All this can be measured easily by these new services and for free. It’s kind of easy to check if your numbers in several ways. If you do it for real, the numbers add up. You cheat, and it will cost you so much to keep everything on track. Yes, all these numbers can be manipulated but it’s very hard and costly to do all of them at the same time.

The data is why you cheat, it also gives away that you cheat. Data just tells what’s in there. But this is the same as you are buying a “real” Chanel bag from the guy on the street for a fraction of the price of the ones in a real Chanel store. The risk that an unknown Canadian rapper has millions of streams, but no one knows him (Hello Manafest!) is too good to be true. And no, these cheaters will not make a career. In the end the game comes back and bites them in the rear. Their songs are not good enough neither their live shows. A career is built on trust with a real audience. 

The problem we have right now is that money is going to the pockets that should not have them. The part of the industry that has shoveled their heads in the sand, telling us that the problem is not that big (Hello PRS:s, Ifpi, Spotify) has just by ignoring probably crashed the path for several artists that was up and coming and really had what it took but didn’t cheat and because of that never saw the light to a bigger audience.

I just wish I was wrong on the last one, but I guess not. In the end, yes you can trust data, so use the data to flush the cheaters out. You can do that and yes you will be stepping on toes. Still can you please add in the majors. It’s not fair they have a monopoly on cheating.

There is no point of cheating!

When I explain all the steps you have to do to get to certain point in your career, they just stare at you. Then they say "I can't do all that it won't work out". Then they come with "Is there a quicker way, a shortcut".

No there is no shortcut. You can take off things you should do, but that only ends up that things are lacking. One of the more common believes is that money would solve the problem with the gaps in the career. That you invest more in the parts you are really doing. I had that thought as well but when I tested it never worked out. It's like you can see when a  thing is fake.

One of the more obvious things is interviews. The artist that does all the stuff in the way of a career will learn on the way to make good interviews. It's a trial and error thing. If you cheat and jump these steps you have to pay a media consultant to teach you to do interviews. But even that becomes kind of not good. There is no story!

It's like I said before it's all about the story. The cheating artist jumps in the story so it is just one topic. The artist that take all steps has a lot of things to talk about and it becomes natural to bring views up in an interview for example.

Now I can just hear people say "what is cheating". It's a lot of things. For example, you buy a lot streams from some source. Yes, your streams will be up but since they re not real people listening, in the end, it will jump up and bite you. Normally a lot of streams comes that you are entering different circles and that comes with good stories.

Another cheat is to enter a big competition like Eurovision song contest. It's not really cheating, but if you are a new artist you jump too many steps to handle it after the competition. In reality, your only story is that you have been in the competition.

Also getting a number one hit can be cheating. The thing goes to fast and in the end, it's easy to just become a one hit wonder. It's the same mechanism you jump steps that you have to take since you are in a hurry.

So should you always slow down? No, you should do everything. And to do that it will take time. Slow down is another thing that kills your career. That is tomorrows blog post.