By Adam Berlin
The Threatin debacle exposed a fraud, but the real exposé was of Facebook and a music industry which just experienced the equivalent of a Russian hack.
I’m in a band. Whenever I daydream about winning the lottery I think, I will plough some funds into the band, then we’ll “make it”. We’ll tour the world, run a big PR campaign and receive pages and pages of copy. Why do I think this. Because in too-late-capitalism, money = success.
As soon as Facebook became the only game in town, the idea of handing out a flyer for your next show became unthinkable. From 2008 to 2013 you could friend request thousands of people and invite those “friends” to your gigs. A utopian world of direct unmediated interaction between artist and fan or the medium and the masses beckoned.
But [Adam Curtis voice], this was a fallacy.
With the aggressive monitisation of the platform in the last five years. Facebook has made all forms of communication, purely transactional. While the top 1% of bands and artists can afford to negate such exchange, that percentile exists soley to convince the 99% that they are able to engage in free and unmediated interaction.
Enter Mr Threatin, who stands accused of not being an awful preening rocker douche, but rather being wealthy enough to game the system. Perhaps Mr Threatin was inspired by the Russian spy agency, the GRU’s successful disruption of international elections, with social media fraud and disinformation. He has of course only taken Facebook’s raisin d’etre at face value; if you pay they will come.
What has Mr Threatin done other than use the available tools and techniques used by music labels? How does a label lay the groundwork for a new artist who haven’t done the ground work of say a toilet tour, or isn’t the latest survivor of a bottom-up success story? With the postings of sycophantic paid-up hacks, influencers and stooges of course.
Would we have heard about Threatin if they were legitimised by a label? I doubt it. They would have been just another US export trying to break Europe. Like Steve Bannon, or chlorine washed chicken.
Recently it’s impossible to ignore Facebook’s modus operandi is at odds with our creative endeavours. The continuing reports of data violations and how such information is used by groups we actively condone is alarming. We have spent as much money on Facebook advertising as we had recording our third album. I’m sure our fans would prefer a fourth album instead of more adverts.
Like all major infrastructure networks since the industrial revolution, digital platforms tend towards monopoly, extracting increasingly punitive rent once their dominant market position is ensured.
Maybe the bright new digital economy isn’t so different from the bad old heavy economy after all.
And yet… There is no alternative. Let me know if you find one.
Adam is the guitarist from London doom-disco combo Cold In Berlin.
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