Following Rolling Stone‘s bombshell report exposing the music industry’s pay-for-play when it comes to streaming, Iggy Azalea is speaking out on the topic again. She took to Twitter on Thursday (March 11) looking for answers from people who questioned her validity on the topic when she talked about payola in music in 2019.
“Remember when the internet said I was making up that streaming has payola worse than radio,” Azalea wrote. “Glad someone’s starting to expose the secret world of streaming and ‘curators’ it’s time.”
Back in 2019, the “Fancy” rapper claimed stream inflation was a real thing that wasn’t being talked about enough in the industry when compared to the pay-for-play seen with radio stations.
“Y’all act like it’s not a thing,” she said. “It is a thing & it’s not even being monitored yet the way radio payola is at least policed.”
Rolling Stone‘s exposé obtained audio of a phone call between G-Eazy’s team and a digital marketer named Joshua Mack who promised to get them streams boosted for a price on the “black market.”
Mack reportedly said he had the ability to generate “200 million streams a month” for around $30-$50,000 a month and he’s done this for numerous major acts.
G-Eazy's Team Allegedly Fielded ‘Stream Manipulation' Talks To Boost 2019 Release
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has regulations to limit radio payola, but no entity is really responsible for regulating streaming manipulation. However, major streaming services such a Spotify have tried to penalize those who engage in the practice.
And people are surprised by this…? The billboard chart streaming #’s any of the awards or BS are all bought and paid for participation awards for a buncha dummies like this fool drake and all the other garbage posted in mainstream music…even this site is a perfect example of pay to play with all the garbage cardi b meg tory lanez and tekashi stories constantly being published instead of actual legit hiphop being spoke of and talked about based on merit and actual talent not whos got the most $$$$ bring real hiphop and music back…
Remember when 6-9 said Bieber and Ariana Grande were doing this and people just laughed and said he was salty? Welp…
Uh those people did something completely different and absolutely didn’t hide it. They told their fans how to record streams for them with out even listening to their music. And they got in trouble for it. 69 is not a reliable source young one.