In order for a musician to succeed in the music business, marketing is essential. It aids in expanding one’s audience as well as creating a lucrative and long-lasting career. With artists constantly trying to climb the charts, musicians try many techniques in marketing. Artists can better understand and make use of tools like social media, streaming algorithms, and online advertising thanks to the growth of digital platforms and marketing.
Artists sometimes take new angles to promote their new music, but it doesn’t always go as planned. There have been many terrible marketing ploys used by musicians, ranging from Apple Music forcing U2’s album into everyone’s library to Katy Perry inciting a nationwide biohazard in Australia.
This list highlights just a few of the bad marketing campaigns done by different musicians.
1. Drake Spotify Spam
As summer 2018 approached, Drake was getting ready to release his album “Scorpion.” In June 2018, Drake released the album following a few successful singles. He had used social media posts and billboards, as is typical in his marketing strategy. The problem, though, was that every editorial playlist featured Drake’s picture on the cover when the album was first released on Spotify.
Drake was on the R&B and rap playlists, so it had made sense to see him there. His appearance on the covers of playlists labeled “Fresh Gospel,” “Best of British,” and “Ambient Chill” caused some confusion. These playlists didn’t even feature any of Drake’s songs.
When Spotify users started looking into it, they discovered that he wasn’t in the playlist for more than 50% of the playlists with his picture on the cover. No outlet mentioned whether his team or Spotify was responsible for this or if it was a paid promotion.
A number of users argued that they paid for the subscription in order to avoid seeing the advertisements. Drake was still an advertisement to listeners. As a result, a lot of people asked Spotify for refunds, and to their surprise, Spotify started to comply. Many think that Drake’s album beat the records for most streams in a week and in a day thanks in part to the covers.
2. Katy Perry’s Biohazard Marketing
2013 saw the release of Katy Perry’s album “Prism.” Since it was her fourth studio album, she invested a lot of time and energy into marketing and promotion.
One of the promotional tools she used was a golden semi-truck that drove around revealing her album’s name. Additionally, she collaborated with Pepsi to host events where fans could participate in the project.
Following its release in October 2013, the album peaked at number one in the US, the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and—most significantly—Australia.
Australia is significant because the album’s logo was printed on seed paper when the CDs were released as a deluxe edition.
Katy Perry had Tweeted, “USA: Exclusive! The 1st 300k copies of Prism (Deluxe) has a seed prism you can plant to spread the light.” Bonus gifts in CDs aren’t uncommon and are really liked by fans. It was seen as a good way for her to encourage her fans to go out and buy the album.
Still, this backfired. “Prism” has been identified by Australian authorities as a biosecurity risk. According to Katy Perry’s team, the CDs bought in Australia were authentic, and the seeds were sourced locally in Western Australia. However, the Australian Department of Agriculture expressed concern about CDs bought overseas. Especially since Australians statistically bought more stuff from international stores.
Australian biosecurity officers began to quarantine the international versions and started to inspect them to see if they were dangerous. No follow-up determined whether the album was banned or caused significant damage to the country.
3. Justin Biebers “Yummy” Campaign
Justin Bieber released his single “Yummy” on January 23, 2020. This track is on the album “Changes.” Fans can see that this song was meant to go viral upon its release. Justin Bieber expressed how much he wanted this song to reach number one.
During this period, TikTok was proving to be a major force behind music going viral. This song was made for TikTok, not for the average listener’s playlist. Justin only signed up for the app in order to promote “Yummy.” Justin made two strange decisions to promote the song.
The first method involved uploading numerous images of unrelated babies to Instagram along with the hashtag “#Yummy.” There was a lot of backlash to this, and many people were disturbed and grossed out. Some even connected the song to the “Pizza Gate” theory.
But Justin thought his song should have a higher pitch. Justin essentially begged his fans to stream his song as part of his marketing strategy. He had shared instructions on Instagram about how to get his song to the top of the charts. There were Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube instructions. He advised Spotify users to create playlists featuring just that song and to play it quietly while they slept. In essence, Justin was requesting fake streams.
This post was a repost from a fan page, but the internet did not care. Many were making fun of his attempt. In the end. Roddy Rich has won the battle and went #1 with his song “The Box.” After his victory was assured, Roddy Rich had tweeted out, “Stream Yummy by Justin Bieber.”
4. Rihanna’s Nightmare Plane
2012 saw Rihanna preparing for the release of “Unapologetic,” her next album. She used an extensive approach to promote her album. In order to perform seven different shows, Rihanna flew a private jet full of reporters, fans, and media to seven different cities.
With a documentary to go along with it, the “777 Tour” was expected to be a big deal. A special letter inviting them to the tour was sent by mail to 150 journalists from 82 different countries and a select group of fans.
Upon arrival, guests were greeted with goodie bags and filled with excitement for the upcoming event. Everything went well on the first day; first-class meals were served to all passengers, and celebrations got underway. However, after the first day, things had gotten worse. One issue that surfaced fast was sleep deprivation. Furthermore, complaints were made that alcohol was being served instead of food. Soon after, visitors started to complain that they had hardly seen Rihanna.
After 5 days of this, passengers had reached their limit. On November 19th at 4 am, the passengers staged a protest on the plane. One reporter on the plane compared the food to “Summer camp food if instead of Summer camps, we sent children to prison.” Finally on the last day, thirty minutes before the plane landed, Rihanna came out of hiding to answer some questions. She claimed the reason she was gone so much was because she wanted to save her voice for upcoming shows, she said, “I know you guys barely got any dirt, but I had to be good. I still sound like shit.”
5. Apple Forced U2’S Album
Steve Jobs maintained close ties with numerous musicians, including the band U2, while he was developing the iPod and iTunes. Apple released an iPod featuring U2 songs and used their music in commercials. Apple and many other businesses collaborated with Bono on his “Red” product in an effort to raise funds and awareness for eliminating AIDS in Africa.
Concerned about staying relevant, Apple and Bono agreed to work together once more. Apple held their yearly event on September 9th, 2014, during which they unveiled new products. Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 and the original Apple Watch at the time.
They also revealed their partnership with U2. When U2 took the stage, they announced that Apple would be giving away copies of their new album, “Songs of Innocence,” to everyone.
Apple paid U2 more than $100 million on September 9, 2014, and distributed the album to its more than 500 million iTunes customers.
They established it to be the biggest album release ever. People were furious about this, though. Some even dubbed them the most despised band in America.
This was a result of the local storage of iTunes music on your phone at the time. There wasn’t much storage on phones at this time. Consequently, the album used a significant amount of space for those who had little.
Additionally, users were unable to delete the album. All they could do was hide it. Due to the overwhelming negative response, Apple created a page a week after the album’s release with instructions on how to remove it.
Bono said, “I take full responsibility. I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite.”
Apple had later released a report that said 33 million people had at least listened to one song from the album. Which is only about 6.7% of the 500 plus million users.
