Exerpt from http://gentlejones.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-payola-report.html
I sent the video to several music blogs and the response was incredible! Hot Press Magazine called the video, "Stunning... Eye-popping... Fabulous!" However, among these blogs I emailed were several who directly asked me for money just to post the video! This type of payola is increasingly common online these days. Many of those payola blogs are just automated content retweeted by cheap twitterbots and of no real value to an aspiring artist because real people don't actually check the content. Here I've posted a few of the emails I got in response to the video just to give other artists and music fans an idea of what its like to be independent in today's music business and the sorts of predatory folks who will try and juice you, many of them openly admit they are using twitterbots to promote your content:
--Subject: Re: New Video! High Elders Surrounded By Lights
To: Gentle Jones
$100 it'll be up by midnight and emailed to other blogs affiliated with me--
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--Subject: Re: New Video! High Elders - Surrounded By Lights
To: Gentle Jones
For general posts we charge a small fee of $10.00 for standard placement and $25.00 for featured placement which includes a 3 day tweeting of the video on our Twitter page personally.
If you are unable to pay we will put the video/song in consideration for placement. As we get 100's of emails a day for artist placements. If you are selected we will email you the link to the video on our site and will tweet it out one time after being posted.
If interested please send the payment via Paypal
Thanks,--
Man, what scumbags.
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