Ever ask yourself why there are so many scammers in this industry?
If you have been making music for a while or even if you haven’t, you were surely reached by the phrase “beware the scammers!”. How come that everyone, even those who are not into this world, are so aware that it’s full of liars and false promises? One could say that scammers have no particular affection for one sector or another, as long as they can profit off of something. That’s certainly true. However, I can’t help but (negatively) marvel about the quantity of wrongdoing within this industry that, according to my investigations, is one of the fakest out there. That’s why I wanted to reason about it to keep raising awareness.
After researching and assessing it from different points of view, I gathered three main reasons why the music industry is so shady and ruthless. The first one is that music and fame (because our modern bias is that apparently these two things are interwoven) are something that tap into some deep human’s depth and desire for recognition and social status. I’m sure there are a lot of people who, since birth, couldn’t care less about becoming famous and being followed by millions of people. At the same time, I guess we ought to be honest with ourselves: most human beings, regardless of their initial status and background, would feel that their lives would be much happier if they were famous (thus, rich?), powered by the charm that being a music artist gives you.
Whenever you start making music, you begin to dream about playing on a big stage, in front of tens of thousands of people screaming your name, selling millions of records (or, well, getting millions of streams). Of course this happens almost instantaneously because that’s what we have been seeing over the past 70/80 years. A successful artist is the one that’s followed by millions of people, otherwise it means he/she sucks. Although this sentence is offensive and absolutely not true, it’s actually quite hard to erase it from our chip. It takes time and a lot of work.
Now, considering the starting point, it’s no wonder scammers would party with such an emotional drive. Feelings define our lives much more than our rational mind does. Therefore, we are literally able to do irrational, illogical, prejudicial things and make awful decisions in the pursuit of something that’s emotionally important to us. Unfortunately, the world never lacks careless and ruthless people so, whenever our hunger for recognition, fame and fortune takes over, they’ll sense our weakness and will harm as much as they can.
In order to succeed in cheating people, it takes a good amount of the second reasons: lack of knowledge and awareness. Think about it: the more I don’t know about one thing, the more exposed I am to getting lured by sparkling and shiny promises. By not possessing enough information to tell the difference between truth and lies, I shall probably rely only on my instinct (which is heavily influenced, clouded and vexed by the emotional drive we talked about here above) and on the feeling that I get from the scammer. We all know how they normally are well spoken, charming, charismatic and friendly, that’s why we tend to trust them. How can somebody so nice, smiling and with a picture of his cute cat on his profile be actually mean?
Sadly, despite the circulation of the information during the internet era and the possibility to actually check something/somebody out, at least on the surface, this era is swarming with unaware artists that throw themselves into this business without actually knowing a lot. Not knowing is not a crime for itself, that’s for sure. At the same time, it’s not a justification.
Walking into something unprepared is as wrong as going to give an exam without studying before. With the overwhelming quantity of information and people that can guide new and emerging artists, I personally find that not knowing is a dangerous, negligent and expensive attitude that will definitely cost money and, in many cases, your passion and love for music itself. Totally not worth it.
The value of knowledge is the best investment you can make, along with growing your technical skills. Instead of spending for quick shortcuts or shiny easy solutions, make sure you always know what you are paying for. If it’s just the promise of you “making it”, that’s a significantly big red flag.
The third reason I found for such a countless number of scams and scammers is probably the most relevant… We’re so flooded with false promises and cheaters because the industry is a scam itself! I’ve been in this business for many years, I have peeked behind the curtains and got to know a lot of the untold stuff. Only recently we have begun to see exposed celebrities and mechanisms that fabricated the truths to be sold but, make no mistake; this has happened since there is an industry. I’m pretty sure that at the early stages of the so called music industry, when it was in its infancy, the percentage of scams and scammers was significantly lower but then, when an obscene amount of money started to flow, greed got triggered at unprecedented levels. We humans have seen so many times that, whenever too much money is involved in a certain aspect, it’s quite impossible to keep it clean.
If the product itself of the industry is a scam then we cannot be surprised that its feeding system is based on cheating. Diddy parties, J.Lo “ghost singers”, Lou Pearl managing one of the biggest Ponzi schemes to finance a great quantity of boybands from the 90s, Jay Z first encounter with Rihanna… We can go on and on and on. The digital era made it even more difficult to tell how big an artist really is since the numbers can be easily faked, platinum disks can be bought, billboard chart access has a specific price etc. Those who rise and those who fall are most of the times a chess game between executives who use artists as pawns, totally careless of art, truth and any greater good.
I’m not saying that profiting off art is wrong, absolutely. I’m saying we’ve been fed with a lie. Nothing will ever take away the incredible everlasting artists who gave us unforgettable masterpieces. Nothing and no one. Yet, the system in which they created their masterpieces is rotten, tainted, wrong. The illusion and the lie have been to believe that flowers could continue to bloom out of a rotten ground. It can happen once, twice, a few more times… but eventually what’s growing in a tainted field can be nothing but a child of that environment.
As usual, I don’t make a point out of this to say we should call it and give up on music. Actually, it’s completely the opposite. Art’s best expression can take place only when it’s free from restraints, independent, born out of a why that resides in the authentic heart and soul of the creator. This is the best era to pursue authentic creativity, because we have the technological tools to do it and promote it.
The industry, a dying raging leviathan, won’t give up, no matter how many scandals or facts will be exposed and revealed. They, together with a huge part of the entertainment industry, have been the gatekeepers of a lot of things, way beyond music and movies. It’s a system that pursues power, control and exploitation. It’s unlikely they’ll come to their senses, if they haven’t done it so far.
Though that should not scare us; on the contrary it shall release us. Release us from the lie and false belief that “they are those who know”, so that we’d constantly loop up to them, awaiting any form of approval or helping hand for our way in. Hundreds of artists have literally lost their health, mental sanity and candor trying to enter and stick with the system. Now these very ones are publicly calling the system out, telling it’s not worth it.
It is our time to believe it. It is our time to become aware that what we thought was the best place to make art it’s actually not. It is our time to create, heal and share for the sake of it, for making this world a better place and so the people who live in it.
