"We started by giving the project a name that we felt described what we were all about: Cl1ckba1t," they explained.
"We took turns on the mic, choosing wildly different styles in our roles as shitty MCs. Some added Auto-Tune to off key bars, while others simply said all of the most cringey lines they could think of. With some shoddy production flourishes, we’d created the exact opposite of a cool track."
They bought 10,000 plays for $40 from a company named Streamify. While I always assumed these were robots doing soulless robot things, it turns out there is an art to gaming the inbuilt (robot) moderators at Spotify who flag these kinda things.
Here's their track. I haven't listened, but I'm sure it's exactly as rubbish as they claim.
"We chose to blow $40 on 10,000 plays, as we felt anything less would make us look bad", they explain. "With ultimate Spotify glory within our grasp, we got greedy and tried to get all 10,000 plays in one day. Luckily, this wasn’t Streamify’s first rodeo in the world of buying popularity, and they immediately hit us with a warning, stating that more than 10,000 plays in one day would be 'dangerous' for our track."
The service suggested they spread the plays over two months; they countered with ten days, and just as ordered, the track sat at 10,000 listeners within ten days. Then... nothing.
"After ten days, we’d hit our target. Yet, even though we were listed as having as many as 5,000 monthly listeners at our peak, we today have 0, while our track has 10,000 plays, as promised. Thanks, Streamify."
