Russ has snarked on the industry again — and this time, he’s taken aim at streaming numbers and the potential to fake them, which many mainstream artists allegedly do.
The Atlanta rapper took to Twitter on Thursday (September 14) to joke that he would start pump-faking his streaming numbers, even though he has quite impressive stats of his own.
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“Real shit, I’m bout to start faking my streams like everyone else [laughing face emojis],” he wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “It’s marketing when you think about it. General person is a sheep.”
He continued: “If you see a song has let’s say 100m streams and you haven’t heard it, you think ‘damn I’m tripping I needa go peep.’ And then the fake streams get you real streams. Such a ridiculous game but f**k it, maybe I’ll film the whole process and drop a doc after.”
Russ then posted a tweet of his own stats, which were nothing short of impressive. Check out the tweets below.
Russ plans to "start faking my streams like everyone else" despite huge statshttps://t.co/52WCdDsvQrpic.twitter.com/uNh8tM1gTv
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) September 15, 2023
Billy in the last 12 months. Big love preciate y’all pic.twitter.com/HrYDbO275F
— SANTIAGO (@russdiemon) September 15, 2023
Last month, Russ levied some pretty serious allegations against Billboard and Luminate — the companies responsible for overseeing the U.S. music charts — accusing them of cheating him out of thousands of sales of his new album Santiago.
The Atlanta rapper made the claims on Twitter after it was reported that his latest project had debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200, opening with 42,000 album-equivalent units in its first week.
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While that figure would be a respectable tally for any independent artist, Russ felt it was a little low — especially considering he was initially projected to crack the Top 10 with over 50,000 units — and accused Billboard and Luminate of robbing him of 10,000 sales in their calculations.
“Billboard & Luminate took away ANOTHER 4,000 of my REAL sales over the weekend making that 10,000 sales total they took away from me while allowing major labels to fake their streams and sales and do monopolistic merch bundles (only major labels are allowed to do merch bundles because the only approved vendor is a major label vendor),” he wrote.
“These numbers and charts are made up. The impact however is not. Shoutout to the fans.”
The Chomp MC also reshared two outspoken tweets from his manager, Milan Ackerman, who accused major labels of “inflating” their artists’ numbers with fake streams and the companies in charge of failing to properly verify streaming and sales data, implying there’s a conspiracy at play.
“I don’t think y’all realize how nuts this is…Billboard charts are inflated by fake data which is being verified by only one company, Luminate,” Russ wrote in his quote-tweet.
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“Both Billboard & Luminate are owned by the same company [facepalm emoji] Anyway imma sit back and watch Milan expose the whole shit [popcorn emojis] [crying face emojis].”
