Scams, fraud & bad business

Isn't creative business rife with scams? Bad contracts on artists, producers and promoters or agents who steal, people who pose as what they're not, projects with promises that fly by night, bootlegs, power abuse & litigation... how does it hit this underground type of music? I've heard of bad crowdfund failures.

Right now I'm listening to a podcast. Chameleon: The Hollywood Con Queen. It's a series about lower-level working Hollywood talent who are tricked to fly overseas with promises of work, then get led down the garden path. The methods are BONKERS. It hit as high as Enrique Iglesias and some movie executives, and there might have been 1000 victims over the years. The episode 9.5 does a really interesting profile about what makes a con artist (intent, not just methods because they do a lot of things that are normal if not for deception.)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chameleon-hollywood-con-queen/id1532225667

In between the old forum dying and the new one starting, I was in litigation after getting defrauded and sued for talking about it. I sued back and won and the fraudster was convicted. But mostly I'm curious about music people running into such things. Are there watchdogs? There are ones for publishing scams, how about music.

In between the old forum dying and the new one starting, I was in litigation after getting defrauded and sued for talking about it. I sued back and won and the fraudster was convicted. But mostly I'm curious about music people running into such things. Are there watchdogs? There are ones for publishing scams, how about music.

WOW - Really?

Do you remember this BIG one?

WIKI: Fyre Festival fraud-scam

Seems like this type of thing just keeps happening.

Oh yeah, did you see this one?

D4 Music Marketing: How To NOT Get Scammed With “Music Promotion” Services

That's wut i'm talkin about!!

I haven't watched the fyre fest docs but is there any Billy McFarland for this scene? I hope not. Crazy story though.

These things are fucking sick because they can catch ANYONE. Smart people are as at risk as naive people because they think they can see through scams, but successful scams get them to gamble without knowing what's wrong because it's a gamble. You can't see the outcome and it's based on "trust me bro, i proved i'm nice and other people trust me".

The one that caught me was attached to one of the most loved living genre writers. Long story short, the outcome of me blowing the whistle was the court found the writer a victim of elder abuse. The abuser was playing agent and had everyone under a spell of loving his victim. It's a terrible topic i could write a book on, but litigation was very much like being targeted by the mafia, they used every tactic just short of actually paying for violence. My family got threatened, there was an attempt to wiretap that would have been a federal crime if it wasn't caught, i don't want to get into it too far but crime does pay if victims can't afford justice. There were $100 million+ ambitions so it was big but only little parts are known in public.

ANYWAYS there was a drag post way back on the old forum about someone paying for myspace followers i wont repeat because it was probably just a wishful hope for a shortcut to success and it's mean to gossip on ancient history. It's good to watchdog though! Woof!

The one that caught me was attached to one of the most loved living genre writers. Long story short, the outcome of me blowing the whistle was the court found the writer a victim of elder abuse. The abuser was playing agent and had everyone under a spell of loving his victim. It's a terrible topic i could write a book on, but litigation was very much like being targeted by the mafia, they used every tactic just short of actually paying for violence. My family got threatened, there was an attempt to wiretap that would have been a federal crime if it wasn't caught, i don't want to get into it too far but crime does pay if victims can't afford justice. There were $100 million+ ambitions so it was big but only little parts are known in public.

Yeah, I know about that, and that's some awful shit. I'm so glad the author got out from that as well

Just read about one from 2018, a case of streaming revenue arbitrage on Spotify. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/great-big-spotify-scam-bulgarian-playlister-swindle-way-fortune-streaming-service/

Someone paid for 1200 subscription accounts, then had bots play generic filler tracks 24/7 to squeeze a million bucks out without breaking laws.

I've run into content farming on there. Just uploading massive amounts of generic filler to capitalize on keywords. It's annoying.

Some of it is almost legit, like providing appealing background music to license for shows or something. A friend even got fooled to try figuring out what the artist was. I looked and found an account that just tweaked the ingredients slightly and uploaded hundreds of similar tracks under different names.

It's not as bad as an audio equivalent of Elsagate because I don't think it was based on playing tricks on children with creepy content. Kind of the opposite, tricking you with vague mush. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate

A different kind of industrial music and slimewave for Cory. Undustrial.