Payola for album reviews? FFS

[publictransport]

I wanted to warn people about these guys. A couple days ago 'Indie Music Album Reviews' emailed me, offering an album review in exchange for $25-40 dollars depending on how much media they embedded in the post. I posted the email exchange I had with them here- utterly outrageous.

Are there other blogs that do this? This is a practice that really deserves naming and shaming. This blog in particular seems to have been doing this racket for over a year, spamming Bandcamp "New Releases" artists and pulling in hundreds of dollars a week.

[pianoforte]

Interesting. Thanks for mentioning this here so that twoism members don't get caught in this trap.

[The Telepathic Kid]

oh. hey. <_<

[Vostok]

I was also contacted by the same people, although paying for actual reviews, I still wanted to see my name in a weekly roundup. I still haven't hear from them since a month ago though.

[nickb523]

loads of people do it man.... labels normallly sort that shit out tho.

it's not that unusual!

[golbez]

yeah I kinda don't see the problem here. It'd be one thing if the more you paid the higher the review rating would be but from what they've said they rate the album the same no matter which option is chosen. It's a good way to get exposure when you're otherwise completely unknown

[publictransport]

Exposure to whom? I don't know why anyone would want to pay for exposure to fake fans. Indie Music Album Reviews got 2000 of their Facebook fans over a week in February, and the other 2000 all at once in March.

The bands I contacted that paid for reviews said they didn't get a single Bandcamp click off that site, and feel a bit shitty for paying in the first place. When a band pays for a review, the review is automatically suspect. That site guarantees any reviews will at least be favorable.