It's increasingly practiced in the open in the music industry these days. There was a recent row over the revelation that Chaotic Good, a music marketing compa

It's increasingly practiced in the open in the music industry these days. There was a recent row over the revelation that Chaotic Good, a music marketing company, was astroturfing on behalf of the bands Geese and Sombr. I had a meeting last week with a well-known record producer who tells me labels are increasingly leaning into astroturfing. Just two days ago a colleague told me about his bandmate whose day job is managing five Instagram accounts to astroturf for Mk.Gee. According to her, "Mk.Gee is not allowed to know about it", with the implication that he would reject it if he did.