Bots & Artificial Streams Are Killing Hip Hop

The role that streams play looms large in rap. What’s so beautiful about the pure sales and the amount the digital atmosphere holds is powerful. But bots prove to be a problem. As persistent as it is, it can be shown that the inflated sales, false recordings, and mistaken projections bring the idea of what the scoreboard reads.

If you say that a rapper sells a million units in the first week, it means something more than just the numbers. It is a signal to the world that this MC is a force to be reckoned with in the game. It displays the machine of the game. It functions only with the recognition that there is some kind of mechanism that grants some rappers the chance to reach the pinnacles of the game.

Bots present a problem because they distort the reality behind all of the different ways of expression the rappers demonstrate. They could be hot and popping one album and then fall off on the next based on the perception that they didn’t perform well commercially. This begs the question: are rappers great because they sell or sell because they’re great?

In the moment that streams have completely revolutionized the whole game, this is a prime example of how technology continues to shape our lives and how we shape technology. If a way to cut through the nonsense continues like this, we will be forever entrenched in the idea that just because someone can sell makes them more authentic, more fascinating, or true.

Given the amount of rappers jockeying for position in the world, there is a definitive way to make the reality of sales be real. This is the expectation hanging over every rapper’s mind like a crooked halo. When it is considerably difficult to parse through who is real and who is just fronting it becomes harder and harder to tell whose sales reflect existence. The lies that continue through the inflated sales challenges Jay-Z’s assertion, “women lie, men lie, numbers don’t.” This bot issue flies in the face of this whole notion.

With the amount of numbers on the board, who can calculate them properly?

Where are the bean counters to address this situation? The bots are the new pirates. When the FBI issued warnings against pirating content on the back of CD booklets, that reigned even when piracy ruled much of the world over time.

Now, it’s all about protecting artists and record labels from bots. The inability to truly catch every stream that has been devised rather than generated genuinely. The work of the men and women who seek to claim platinum and diamond status must show their powers on the microphone first. If they have the talent and ambition, the sales will show. Despite the strong showing that an artist might have with a specific project, they have to repeat it or deliver something as close to it as possible. Either that or they have to be critically acclaimed.

Again, this happened with Hov. He sold five million units with Life and Times of Shawn Carter Vol. 2. He sold that many with a double album but not before only selling two million units with The Blueprint. His subsequent albums have all achieved over a million units sold, but none have matched Vol. 2.

The same goes with Ye. He has produced only a few billion streams of his magnum opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy but Graduation sells more despite the critical adulation. Is it all about bots? What can be said about the future of the music business? It appears the bots will forever be a presence but the fight against them must be a constant.