DISCUSSION: Psy-Ops and Music Marketing

What happens when you can't distinguish reality from media hype? Recent reports of how marketing companies fabricate internet-conquering moments, create fictitious fan accounts, and construct seemingly bottom-up enthusiasm have shown how difficult it is to decide who and why can be trusted online today.

But is it really a new thing? Through bribes in exchange for airtime and PR or manipulation of playlists, music has always been linked to the careful production of interest. Only the scale of this phenomenon has changed, how quickly it occurs and that it is more veiled. Marketing today can impersonate fandom, music criticism or spontaneous conversation about culture.

Moderated by music journalist and Pitchfork Deputy Director Jeremy Larson, this discussion will feature curator and cultural producer Günseli Yalcinkaya, music journalist Shaad D'Souza, and producer and DJ Marek Stuczyński (aka Eltron John). Together they will consider where the promotion ends and the manipulation begins. Who is responsible for the narrative created around a given artistic person? Can real music scenes survive in the age of algorithmic marketing? And in the age of attention economy, doesn't authenticity itself become just another product that can be sold?