“I've been wary of people referring to it in any way as a ‘hit piece’ or even particularly investigative. I just listened to an interview and poked around a website. The most compelling part to me in many ways was how plainly all these tactics were discussed, even as the tactics themselves succeed when operating somewhat out of view.”

The situation got a little sketchier when, shortly after McLamb’s post started spreading in music biz circles, Chaotic Good wiped mentions of specific artists—including Geese and Cameron Winter—from its website. This, too, the company freely admits. The team also removed reference to “narrative campaigns.”

“We took things down from the site so our artist partners don't get wrapped up in false accusations or misconceptions about how their music was discovered,” Tarsia says. “Much of the discourse around ‘narrative campaigns’ we were seeing online was not accurate to how they actually function. In practice, narrative campaigns mostly consist of consulting on digital PR strategy.”

Partisan Records, the label behind both Getting Killed and Winter's solo debut, did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s an open secret in the music industry that all the numbers—play counts, followers, stats—are fake or at least obfuscated. Last year, a California-based rapper sued Spotify, alleging he and other musicians were losing money because of artificially inflated streams. The complaint cited Drake (who was not a defendant), claiming that his Spotify streams were “inauthentic and appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of bot accounts." Bots and “streaming farms” have become a marketing expense.

For an industry that used to ply radio DJs with steak dinners, backstage passes, and lines of blow in exchange for airtime, it’s business as usual. Among some fans, there is sometimes a naive hope that “indie artists” should be held to a different—perhaps higher—standard. Nobody minds when major label pop stars do this sort of thing. It’s expected. But bands who trade in hard-earned credibility can take a hit.

As Darren Hemmings, author of the popular industry insider newsletter Network Notes, and founder of the UK marketing agency Motive Unknown, recently put it in a post: “Reputational damage is the toughest thing to shake. In art, being derided as fake or (the old classic) an ‘industry plant’ can see your credibility disappear at an alarming pace.”

“I do think people have a needless purity about artists who aren't on major labels, or even artists who seem counterculture in any way,” McLamb says. “This kind of marketing seems to be what it takes to cut through the algorithmic noise.”

Chaotic Good stops short of admitting it was using “fake fan” accounts, or bots, to drive buzz around Geese’s Getting Killed and Winter’s 2024 record, Heavy Metal. The accounts driving the discourse are, in a sense, “genuine”—bespoke, engineered, and overseen directly by the in-house PR team, working from their smartphones. Tarsia insists that Chaotic Good’s teams “don’t ever use any strategies that involve the artificial inflation of streaming or social media numbers.”

Geese has “worked hard building a real grassroots community to achieve all their recent success,” Tarsia says. “We’re protective and aware of the relationship between fan community and artist and want to aid that connection, not force it. We are vehemently opposed to the use of bot farms, and our team solely consists of genuine music fans.”

The idea of a PR firm creating dozens of social media accounts to push new music or artists may seem slightly sinister, in part because the very idea of an account arguably presumes some sort of independent consciousness behind it. But is it really any different, in essence, than dozens of music blogs republishing the same press releases pushing that same music and those same bands? These tactics follow a golden rule of so much online discourse, which another of Chaotic Good’s founding partners summed up in that Billboard interview: “Everything on the internet is fake.”

For her part, McLamb says that these sorts of new, extremely online marketing campaigns are “no more or less nefarious than anything else that's been going on in the music business since the dawn of time.” Asked if she would ever consent to these sorts of trend-simulating marketing tactics promoting her own music, McLamb is unequivocal: “I would absolutely take part in a narrative or UGC campaign.”

Update: 4/14/2026, 10:30 AM EDT: WIRED has corrected its description of the lawsuit against Spotify alleging fraudulent streaming.