In the drive to develop a perception of acceptance and a large fan base, many artists/bands are resorting to less-than-honest practices to drive up the visitor count of their social networking pages. The most notorious occurrences of this are on MySpace. Now, don’t take this out of context, I think that network is probably one of the best methods for artists to spread their message today, so this is not a MySpace slam.
One tactic being employed by many bands/artists is to send messages to their friends list requesting them to visit their page and refresh it several times before leaving. This simple action adds one, and sometimes two, hits to the viewed count. I have received these messages myself and that is what prompted me to think about this subject.
When considering this tactic one particular real life scenario kept coming to mind. Let’s say you sell 500 tickets to a show or take 200 covers at the door. Then you station someone next to the bar, one next to the restrooms and one at the entrance to the smoking lounge (or patio, grill etc). Now, have these people count the individuals who pass each of these locations. At the end of the night tally the counts and compare them to the tickets/door counts. WOW!!!! You sold 500 tickets but 3500 people were at the show! But…only 500 people saw you and heard your music. Hmmmm.
This is the same thing that is happening on many of these social networks and is being promoted by artists everywhere. If you ever want to know the reality, check the difference between views and plays. There is usually a drastic difference. So, if you’re employing this method, at least set one of your songs to auto play and tell your refreshers to let it load before clicking agin…that way the deception won’t be so obvious.
