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Blimey, it's been a while since this category was opened up. And, you know, one over-excited irrelevant posting about how the great new The Used single was great, and new, and oh, here's the URL for it - one, we'd overlook. But two comment-spams pushing the same band? That's just taking the piss.
But you have to wonder exactly what goes through their minds sometimes: What training does one do to become lesbian? And is there a possibility of it becoming an Olympic sport?
Aha. As I write this, I get another - "Zac Effron buys Britney Spears' farts".
Perhaps unsurprisingly - although the stench of desperation is somewhat strong - it turns out there are companies who you can pay to boost the number of plays for your band on MySpace:
The Datsuns, for shame, are having this done in their name:
It's been a while since we've had a spate of dimwitted spam, but the work of Lil A Gets Folky can't go unmentioned. We awoke this morning to about seventeen messages from Lil A, each one identical, each one posted to an inappropriate group, and each one suggesting we support "Independant (sic) artists." It's not so much the mispselling, but the suggestion that simply because you're not signed to a major label you deserve support - "Well, obviously, the music is shite, but they've not signed to Virgin, so..." The artists worthy of respect and support are the good ones.
Meanwhile, we were deeply disappointed to discover that The Datsuns (or the Datsun's people) seem to think they need a 'street team'. Surely if Dolf sitting looking like a suck-me monkey on Buzzcocks doesn't work, then no amount of confused young people spamming mailboxes worldwide will? Their first act to is to get each member to sign up another twenty members - so it's like pyramid selling indie rock, then... Shabby and uncalled for.
You'll know we don't like bands who encourage spamming (and kudos to Chris Mills for his non-spamtastic approach to putting together a street-team, although it would have been better if he'd used a different name altogether - the way things are, the French Resistance would have called themselves the DeGaulle Street Team) but we've been following some complaints elsewhere on the Internet where Publicity organisers have been promising Street Teamers guestlist places at gigs, without either them or the label involved clearing it with the actual promoter. The upshot is, of course, that the promoters are ending up out-of-pocket as people who may have done as little as throw forty fliers in a bin turn up and get in free - five or six Street teamers getting Guest List can mean the difference between profit and loss for many promoters of small gigs, and if (as in the case we've heard) six people were given free entry for handing out two hundred fliers, that makes for very expensive promotion of a gig...
You might recall, if you've been with us that long, that we spent some time lurking on a 'street team' list for the band Soul Hooligan, to find out exactly what advice members of these marketing lists are given: "bang on about the band on any internet forum regardless of whether its relevant or not" was the gist of it. Which makes it all the more delicious to report that members on that list are now complaining that posts
What saddens us is not so much that truly heroic acts like Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Elvis Costello feel the need to sign up with a corporation like digital outlook, a group that organises mass-spam-a-thons to plug products, but that they choose a company whose quality of work so obviously says "advertising message disguised - badly - as genuine recommendation" like this.
Real people don't say things like "I'll definitely be buying the album on the 15th" - jesus, people in proper commercials stopped saying stuff like that in about 1985.
The trouble is this whole area stinks - of course, it's not illegal, but its like having your mother vote for you in Porn Stunt Double Cock of the Year.
When Digital Outlook simper Positive reviews generated on almost all leading game sites/shops, do they realise they're more or less blowing the game? They admit they used guerrilla marketing (including reviews) as part of the campaign. This may be legal, but it strikes us as fraudulent, or at best just dishonest. Shabby shame on any artist using such methods.
That's one Damon's not won before you, Noel...
