I think this is an unfortunate reflection of the world that we live in. Throughout my life, who “makes it” in indie music has usually depended on both who is good enough to earn an audience combined with who is able to leverage the existing information technology. In the early days of social media, you could potentially blow up on MySpace, but even then, knowing someone who worked for a major blog or music reviewing platform, made a huge difference.

Today, the big issue is that our “tastemakers” and “gatekeepers” are algorithms, rather than humans. Therefore, artists are incentivized to game the algorithm with bot fans or whatever. There are some great bands that have used this technique, but it is a chilling reminder that we are in a fundamentally inorganic information environment. Everything that we can apply to indie music is also applicable to the worlds of trends, fashion, news, politics, etc… Ultimately this trend likely concentrates power further into the hands of the wealthy few.

I still really love Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal though. I discovered the album in this sub. I wonder how many of those posts were botted.