Balancing Authenticity and Strategic Growth

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They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support, and even in home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together . Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optimus bringing costs down, saving patients money and making it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optim is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business. Optim. com to see how our May fundraising campaign wraps soon, and we want to remind you that Make Me Smart is public media. That means we're here for you and your neighbors without barriers , and that's possible with your support. It's a great time to donate for the first time or renew your support if you're able to. That's how public media works, each of us giving what we can when we can. Donate now at marketplace. org or click the link in the show notes. And thank you . Hello everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us . And today let's dig into something that's bubbling up in the music industry. So there's this rock band out of Brooklyn, New York called Geese that really had a breakout year in twenty twenty five , releasing their fourth studio album, selling out tours, and building a massive following online . But recently, the nature of the band's popularity has sparked a larger conversation about just how musicians break through in the music industry today. To help make us smart about this, we're welcoming back Dan Runsy. He's the founder of Travital, a media company covering the business of music , tech, and culture. Welcome back Dan. Kimberly, thanks for having me. Great to be here. So for folks who haven't been following this, and I will include myself in that because my producer's the ones who flagged this for me . Why is there so much discourse around the band geese ? And in connection, its marketing firm, chaotic good projects. So Kimberly, here's the thing. In the history of music dating back decades. Artist breaking through and finding unique ways to break through has not always been the most linear path where an artist just puts out music and it just happens to get played on the radio. It happens to get heard on streaming services and gets put on playlists. It happens to catch the ears of a promoter that then wants to get that artist to perform on stage. There is a lot of marketing that goes on. There are a lot of relationships that go on. And over time, especially today as it's gotten more crowded than ever to break through , a lot of the artists and the companies they work with have really rolled up their sleeves to find the best ways to make sure that they can get heard because at the end of the day having the talent or having the skills may not be enough to reach your audience . And what we're seeing right now with chaotic good and geese and this rollout that they' ve had in the rise that this band has had over the past year is probably the most recent example of this . So it's a different flavor, but this type of conversation comes up every few years in the music business. Now it's kind of impossible to evaluate exactly how well all this worked, but what kind of strategies did chaotic good use for geese? Particularly the ones that are causing people to be like in this particular instance, there are a few of them, but one of the ones that caught the most attention was the company setting up accounts on different social media platforms and then using those social media platforms to promote fandom and to promote excitement about this particular band geese. They would do it on TikTok, they would do it through quote unquote burner accounts. They would also try to do it through other legitimate accounts or ones that they created to create the illusion or to create the appeal that there is a large number of people who are organically rooting and cheering on this band. As an example, this is similar to a type of tattic you may see for a company that is releasing a product or release and they want to engineer excitement about it. So do they find ways to get people to leave reviews or leave comments to show that people are interested to create a type of experience that may seem or come across more organic than it may actually be on the surface. So I think that's a really important comparison because you're talking about standard tactics for companies that are trying to sell products. And in many ways, musicians are their own kind of companies trying to sell product , but unusual is it to use techniques like this for music? And why are people like kind of getting bent out of shape about these tools being deployed for music . It's this very slippery slope because on one hand, this is an industry where we often see some of the most creative rollouts that are done to promote a project even from the biggest artist in the world because we all know that them just pressing submit and having their music come out. Sure once in a while Beyonce can do something like that in twenty thirteen when she released her self titled album, but ever since then , especially now, it does take a bit more , especially in the digital age, but I think what really gets people's gears with this one is these aren't real fans that are saying these things . Sure, the agency and the people that are working with them, yes, those are people that are pushing and promoting the artists, but it isn't coming across and it isn't being put out the way that people would expect it to be at least from like what they see. And in many ways, I think it also strikes a nerve of what people feel frustrated about oftentimes with social media, more broadly, even outside of music where what someone is being presented isn't exactly what the actual authentic experience is. And I think it happens now. The reaction is to a more heightened degree because this is an indie rock and roll band that we're talking about. To be frank, some of these tactics may be a bit more common in pop music or other contemporary genres and there may be less of concern or less of a backlash from the fans, but particularly in indie rock, dating back decades. This is the one genre if anything where authenticity not se,ll ing out, all of that stuff is real. And then especially for rock music, a genre that probably hasn't had as much spotlight on it in recent decades to have a breath of fresh air come through for this to come through. This is one of the last things that this type of fan base would want to hear or see. So much of this and the way that it played out is contingent on the nature of the social media platforms, particularly TikTok , how do you think TikTok has changed the way that music is shared, discovered , and marketed? TikTok in many ways for music specifically is the new MTV. And it's the new MTV in that what TikTok does is it forces a lot of the artists to use it as the marketing tool for the underlying product that they're putting out there, being the music , but it also shifts the type of expectations of what breaks through but then also impacts what people may resonate to moving forward and how that shapes what popularity looks like. The reason I compare it to MTV is because what we saw in the eighties and even the early nineties with MTV is that it shifted the type of artist that broke through and what was required to breakthrough. There were a number of genres like Soft Rock, Yacht Rock and others, where you had great talented musicians that had the voice that could command a stage , but they may not have had the appearance that could capture MTV the way that a Michael Jackson a Madonna or other artist would at the time. And if you fast forward now to TikTok, the way that it is today , a lot of the artist whose music and style and their own presence is built for being able to present themselves on a sixty second clip or creating unique visuals. That then means for a lot of them they feel like okay being a great artist isn't enough, I need to be a great content creator in addition to having my art put out there in order to break through. So there was already some frustration that I think a lot of people, especially in the indie rock band community, likely had about what TikTok was doing to music. That can lead some frustr ation in people's feelings about how they feel about the band, the process and just where music is and how music may think about things moving forward . And I should mention it's not just geese that was using these techniques, right? Correct. This is not just geese . Chaotic Good specifically works with a number of different artists. They have them on their page, but it also isn't just chaotic good either. So in some ways when I hear this, I'm not that surprised because again, this is an industry where dating back decades , a record label paying a radio station a bit more money and giving them the money under the table, which is payola to get a certain radio record played, them doing that because they knew that that was table stakes or even things we'll see today where they may have a blogger that is quote unquote on payroll that they're paying to talk about their music more often. And sometimes those things aren't always disclosed as ads in that type of way. This one obviously is a more unique experience, but it is a symptom of a broader dynamic which there are certain aspects that are table stakes in music. But like the Tech Startup analogy I'd mentioned earlier, there are a lot of commonalities that we see across the landscape from anyone releasing any type of product, especially in the consumer space that's trying to break through. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back This marketplace podcast is supported by renewal by Anderson. Worried about a hot home and high AC bills this summer, get your window and door replacement project done by a company you can trust. During Renewal By Anderson's thirty one year anniversary sales event, you can save up to thirty percent off all windows and doors with no money down, no monthly payments, and no interest for one . With one hundred and twenty years of innovative engineering, renewal by Anderson Windows are custom built to last from durable fibrex material. They're energy efficient in all seasons and can reduce high energy bills year round. 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This is why over thousands of businesses have made the switch . So why not you? Try Odoo for free at Odu. com that's ODO . com Okay, let's get real about healthcare for a second. I think we can all agree it doesn't always work the way it should. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know what I mean ? The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optim are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support, and even in home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together . Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optimus bringing costs down, saving patients money and making it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optim is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business dot optim dot com to see how Alright, we are back with Trapital Founder Dan Runsy I want to go back to TikTok because I feel like early on people, talk ed about TikTok as this big equalizer when it came to music and particularly virality . But now it feels like if you can pay or game the system to rise to the top of the algorithm , how different is this from Payola or a more traditional marketing setup? With TikTok specifically, especially in the past seven years of its journey specifically, in the U. S., we've seen a few different phases where the first phase, I'd say twenty eighteen, nineteen, even twenty twenty, those first few months of the pandemic, an artist that is putting their music out there trying to get noticed, there is a good chance that they can reach their audience and because it was still early , they could break through much more easily and go viral as a result. Of course, they needed to have some type of talent in order to get the type of following a reach that they had, but they benefited from that. But like any social media platform, as it matured over time, we started to see the professionalization of the landscape where it was harder for the person that was just early to break through the way that they did because now all of the major companies are there. They've then put much more resources towards it. So then to really break through on the platform , it does take a bit more effort. And I think as we see the potential for where TikTok can go, you also see the professionalization of companies offering services to help other users on the platform get to where they need to. And this is not just a music dynamic, but in music, this is obviously high to another level just because of how connected music has been from the origin days of TikTok really hitting its growth stride there. So it does open itself up to these types of services and these types of companies being able to professionalize themselves to help others break through in creative ways. Yeah, I just was recalling that TikTok used to be called musically. Right. That was before the acquisition. Oh my gosh. At the heart of this conversation is authenticity, right? This feeling that listeners can 't tell anymore if they are organically discovering music or if music is kind of becoming popular on its own versus what's being forcefully fed into their al gorithms strategically amplified , and I wonder how you think this is shaping relationship between fans and artists in particular. To some extent, I think there's a certain group of fans that probably expect that some of this has always been happening and likely continues to some extent, right? They understand that there is an image, a package, and there is a mix of things that are both in your control and out of your control that can help you break through. That's one thing that I always hold true, especially now. That said, the one thing I do hang on to and I do think that this is true just based on consumer behavior is that the artificial heat or attention can only get you so far. You can use these types of tactics to engineer attention and awareness, even curiosity , but people can't be forced to care six, nine, twelve months down the road. And if we look at a band like geese right now, based on their current stats, they have around one point seven million spotlight monthly listeners at the time of this recording. They've been able to sell out shows in venues that are, you know, a couple thousand , but not five, ten or arena level size venues . But I think for any artist to get to that level , engineering tattoos of virality and getting people's attention through these types of unique approaches