Chaotic Good Projects Explored
Google. (2026). Prompt: "Robot sitting at a desk, typing and programming code into a desktop computer.
The robot's head is looks like the album cover of Geese's "Getting Killed" album." Retrieved from https://gemini.google.com
Who is to blame for music on the internet?
by Sam L Barker
(June 2026)
The revelations about the machinations of web 3.0 company Chaotic Good Projects have set the music internet spinning. Initially sparked by a Substack post by singer Eliza McLamb and spreading on to mainstream sites Wired and The Guardian. Chaotic Good Projects are a digital marketing firm who have allegedly been offering artists the ability to alter the online discourse around them, specialising in "narrative campaigns" and "trend simulation". These projects are pushed by curated networks of "fake fans" created by the company, and then spread across social media with the goal of boosting the narrative and energy of their client artists. The company's offering is, rather than pushing artists in the traditional blunt sense (advertising, interviews, radio play, paid media opportunities), artists can instead use an army of online bots to pre-set the discourse around their music. They're the hot new band, the internet is abuzz with discussion and debate, people love them. This might seem less powerful than traditional advertising initially, but it aims for the heart rather than the head. It aims to build not just listeners, but fans. Indie band Geese have been at the centre of the controversy, naturally due to the contrast between their genre-bending confrontational rock and the wily corporate manipulation of Chaotic Good Projects. Wired perhaps over-egged the pudding by accusing the hype around them of being a "psyop", but a bevy of other artists have been accused too, including Sombr, Alex Warren, Oklou, Mk.gee, and established acts like Tame Impala and Coldplay. It's not just a case of kicking the new popular kids off the top spot- the problem clearly runs deeper.
The idea of a media company creating armies of fake fans across social media, with a special focus on the cutting edge of youth sharing hub TikTok, seems both deeply cynical and unfortunately very realistic. The internet has absolutely opened the floodgates to any and all music. Thousands upon thousands of tracks are released every day online. The task now is to stand a glimmer of hope of standing out. Everyone is out for an edge. So with this new kind of market stimulation when a new song drops, or a new album is announced, internet browsers will not just see the content as the artist wants, but the reaction to it. Waves of positive excited fans rushing to gush with excitement. And their excitement just might make you get excited too. Once a band have reached the turning point where they're visible enough to be a talking point, they and their managers can now control those talking points and grow upwards.
The response to this news was especially striking because of how genuinely hurt a lot of fans seemed by this. The idea that the ground is really shifting under your feet, you can't trust your own computer screen and the opinions you think are from other peer sincere fans exposed as nodes in a marketing campaign.
There's two ways to look at this phenomenon- as a shocking, dramatic new development in music promotion or as just yet another chapter in the long history of the advertising manipulation of the music industry. It's true that pop music has always been a business. Elvis, The Beatles through to the Sex Pistols were all manufactured to one extent or another. The Beatles in particular created and then codified modern music fandom, with their strong individual characters, personal songwriting and network of adoring fan clubs who could buy things. In many ways, they were the original parasocial fixation of the modern age. And their management knew and actively prompted this. Despite their genuine notoriety and media controversy in the 1970s the Pistols, yes we know, were formed to promote an edgy alt fashion shop, as many jaded punks will remind you. Both bands made great music too, but their intertwining with market forces are undeniable. A cavalcade of popular Boomer and Gen X bands who were once firebrands will now turn up at your nostalgia festival for a handsome price. It's hard to find a band that's squeaky clean and perhaps silly to look for one.
Yet surely there's a difference between blatantly advertising a new product and subversively altering the conversation around an existing one. It's the duplicity that people find uneasy, the idea that it's not just the man feeding you an industry plant, but that your fellow music fans sincerely sharing their enthusiasm aren't even real. That the conversation around the artist doesn't even really exist. Surely we can admit that this might just be new.
For all the flak that annoying Myspace kids or YouTube addicted Zoomers get and got, at least they're real. They actually hold their opinions. And at the core of this puzzle is the rare confidence to actually hold the right opinions about music. It's genuinely hard to take a contrarian stance on popular music. Every type of angle can be commodified, from poptimist stan to outsider metal lover. And it only adds to the twist of the knife that several of the bands who were supposedly working with Chaotic Good Projects were seemingly hard scrabble Indie bands making their way to the top by word of mouth the "right way." But even if you're listening to the hot new band who refuse to people please, you might be dancing to someone else's spreadsheet tune.
Can we cut the bands some slack? I actually think we can. Again, there's simply too much music being made now. How many new songs do you listen to a day? How many new songs by new artists do you listen to a day? Compare that to the never-ending tidal wave of new music uploaded constantly, unrelentingly, and multiply it by the still nascent but very real threat of AI slop taking over our playlists by stealth or brute force. There's a lot to push against if you want to play by the rules.
Your options as a hungry 3-D flesh band are ultimately trying to stoke up social media buzz through ridiculous and non-music related avenues: dances, memes, titillation, drama. Or try and simply pay to play, give money to tech giants to dangle you in front of listeners via suggested ads and playlist insertions. If you do neither, you'll just be dangling out on a limb, hoping someone plucks you out of the ether and makes you a stare. Those aren't great odds. If you're a band who does want to push yourselves, and who actually want to focus on making music above all else, well, why not just let the bot army do all the heavy lifting?
Imagine- you'd spent six months and a not insignificant amount of money writing and recording an album you thought was truly important and meaningful. You'd do anything and break any rule, to make sure it was heard.
And ultimately, regardless of the furor, the music still needs to be good. A band like Geese only got to this point of controversy because their output did capture hearts and minds effectively. Effectively enough for those same people to feel betrayed and upset. You can't brute force nonsense to be popular with these tactics. Even fandom trickery relies on fishing regular people towards something eye-catching. Just with a lot of help along the way. We aren't taking about disposable ringtone pop here- quite the opposite. You need a band with some juice and meaning to make the discourse seem real. Which is again why the aftertaste stings so much.
Yet letting it pass, and letting this become the norm doesn't hold much promise either. Imagine every new band having to marshal an army of fake AI fanbots to swarm social media. It's an awful idea, and would totally devalue music discourse more so than it already has been by the collapse of traditional music journalism. We can already say whatever we want about music all the time. Let's relish the humanness of that. Perhaps we forgive and forget this time, but keep a beady eye on the future.
