Was your favorite music influencer paid to post that song?

The landscape for music discovery has changed drastically over the last few decades. Largely gone are the days of finding your new favorite song by watching MTV or switching through radio stations. Magazine and newspaper reviews are harder and harder to come by, given the decline of print journalism (and arts coverage in particular). And these days, your average music fan might find a new album or artist simply by scrolling social media, inundated with memes, dance challenges and opinionated influencers.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become massive drivers of success in the music industry. TikTok is now key to breaking artists into the zeitgeist (see: this year's best new artist nominees at the Grammys) and helping songs — either new or old — climb Billboard's Hot 100 chart. On these apps, music influencers have become the modern-day equivalent of radio hosts or VJs. They're often independent content creators rather than employees of a media conglomerate; they build their audiences through short-form videos that rely more on the whims of the algorithm than traditional gatekeepers of the industry. Their content is driven by their personal preferences and judgments, forming a new kind of media personality for music fans to latch on to: a trusted voice to let you know what's happening in music.

But even though influencers largely seem like regular people sharing their love of music, the content they're making can sometimes be a form of hidden advertising. NPR spoke with five music influencers who say they often accept payments to post about certain songs or artists without disclosing sponsorship. Some say they don't see any issues with this system — behind-the-scenes payments from labels or agencies for song promos — while others say they feel conflicted about the payments and don't want to be seen as "selling out" to the industry.

Carly Bogie, who posts on TikTok as @hahakcoolgtgbye to over 80,000 followers, started posting "cool girl playlist" videos nearly seven years ago, mostly geared towards collecting her favorite indie rock and pop songs. As her following grew, the former chemical engineer says she began getting approached by labels and artists to feature specific songs on her page. Bogie says she "felt hesitant" about accepting payments at first, but later started working with a manager who helped her figure out which rates to charge for different kinds of content, whether it be undisclosed song promos or sponsored posts that are explicitly labeled as advertisements for ticketing companies or headphone brands.

"He was very helpful to be like, 'This is your worth. What you're doing is a very influential part of the music industry right now,'" Bogie says. "'You deserve to be paid for some of the things that you're doing.'"

Some of the music content she posts — like artist interviews, which she says she's been spending more time on — are unpaid. When it comes to song and artist promos, Bogie says her rate per video ranges from $150 to $400 per post, depending on the scope of the campaign. Recently, Bogie says she was paid $400 each for two videos about a major label pop star coming off the success of a Billboard Hot 100 entry. When asked who approached her on behalf of the artist for those specific promos, Bogie says her manager handled all communications.

"The only stuff that I promote is stuff that I really enjoy and would post about anyway," Bogie says. "I feel like that is a very tricky situation because I never want my audience to think that I'm just posting stuff to get paid for it."

To disclose or not to disclose?

NPR spoke with a TikTok influencer from California with 1.1 million followers who requested anonymity so he could speak freely about the relationship between creators and music labels. He says he began posting TikToks during the pandemic, initially sharing his own original music before pivoting into recommendation and curation content. As his following grew, he says he also worked as a contractor for a label, helping artists launch their own TikTok accounts or creating "burner accounts" — unofficial accounts used to edit and upload clips of archival interviews, music videos and other footage in an effort to fill social media feeds and make an artist go viral on the app.

"It's just like the collective consciousness — what's the long tail of putting all this content out there for every single artist on the internet?" he says, regarding the purpose of these burner accounts. "Then if one thing pops, what could be the result of that? We just want to have this social digital currency and be top of mind."

After several years developing label experience, the California TikTok influencer now works as a full-time content creator. His song promo rates, he says, are on a sliding scale from approximately $300 to $600 per video; he says he avoids charging flat fees for smaller artists in order to help indie acts boost their visibility. Based on his work and experience in both the content and music industry, he says undisclosed song promos are often treated like an open secret.

"Technically, you are supposed to disclose it legally, but it's sort of understood that you don't ever put #ad [in the caption] or disclose it all when it's a paid promo. That's been par for the course the entire time I've been doing these promos," he says, adding that record labels or marketing agencies will often explicitly ask creators not to disclose payment. "I talk to a lot of creators and no one discloses it. It's sort of understood that if you do disclose it, it'll hurt the performance of the content."

Ads have become increasingly prevalent on social media platforms over the last decade, so much so that people sometimes go out of their way to clarify when whatever they're about to recommend is not paid marketing. Influencing, as a result, has become a full-on career. Many creators partner with brands to openly advertise products like makeup or clothing without backlash, but recent events in the music industry have revealed that fans can respond negatively when they learn that content about certain songs or artists is being sponsored.

Digital marketing sparks backlash

In March, the co-founders of the digital marketing agency Chaotic Good Projects spoke to Billboard during a live podcast taping at SXSW music festival about one of their many strategies for manufacturing virality: creating fake fan accounts to post, comment and share clips for the artists on their roster, which ranged from indie rock groups to major pop stars. The admission sparked outrage from fans, most of it aimed at the Brooklyn band Geese. Chaotic Good Projects did not respond to NPR's request for comment. Although digital marketing is not new, Chaotic Good's admission proved to a generation of music fans who've grown up using social media that online narratives are easily manipulated.

Part of the appeal of online music curation is how organic it feels: any music fan can record themselves talking about what's on their playlist and why it should be on yours, too. Personal taste is supposed to be the priority. But as TikTok and Instagram have grown inundated with sponsored posts, some fans suspect that online music stardom is being highly engineered behind the scenes. Open the comment sections for most rising pop stars and the terms "industry plant" and "nepo baby" are sure to make an appearance — the accusation that anyone who appears to be experiencing overnight success must be the product of a carefully-executed label campaign, industry connections or some combination of the two.

But it's not just fans who have criticized online marketing tactics. In June, British singer and producer James Blake posted a series of complaints on his Instagram stories, saying that album reviews, comment sections and streaming numbers are increasingly being inflated or exploited for profit.

"If you're an artist, remember that in 2026 there's not a single part of the system that isn't faked," Blake wrote.

NPR reached out to several record labels — including Interscope, Republic, Atlantic, RCA, Arista, Epic, Columbia, Sub Pop and the general inboxes for Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — to ask whether they engage in influencer marketing campaigns and if so, whether they advise content creators to disclose paid partnerships. At the time of publication, none of the labels have responded to NPR's requests.

Rules for influencers

But there are still rules influencers are supposed to follow. The Federal Trade Commission's guidelines for social media influencers state that creators must clearly and openly inform their audience if they have any "financial, employment, personal, or family relationship with a brand" that they're posting about. According to the FTC, if the endorsement is part of a video, creators should disclose it not only in the caption, but also as superimposed text on the video itself and in the audio to be as clear as possible. When asked whether undisclosed song promos violate these guidelines, the FTC told NPR that it takes "each situation on a case-by-case basis and can't comment on specific situations like this."

Bryson Keith, an influencer with 1 million followers on TikTok, says these guidelines feel less clear when it comes to promoting a song versus a physical product. He estimates that he makes the majority of his income from disclosed brand deals with companies that sell ear plugs or beverages, and that less than 10% comes from undisclosed song promos.

"They [labels or agencies] usually tell you when it needs to be disclosed and labeled as an ad," he says. "But I don't know, I guess it's a little bit different with music because no one's really buying anything. You're just listening to a free song."

In reality, some kind of pay-to-play mechanism has existed in the music industry for hundreds of years, going back to when musicians would get paid to promote sheet music in the 19th century. As radio became a dominant form of entertainment in the 1900s, labels started paying disc-jockeys to play certain songs on air without disclosing payment. In 1960, the Federal Communications Commission made amendments to prior sponsorship laws that effectively outlawed payola in broadcasting, though investigations and settlements related to the practice continued well into the 21st century. Social media platforms, however, don't fall under the FCC's jurisdiction.

All of the creators NPR spoke with described a similar pipeline for song promos. A label or agency reaches out to the creator or their manager, asking for their rate for a particular kind of video. Several influencers said it's common practice for labels to request a "rate card" to have on file, which breaks down a creator's fees for posting on TikTok, on Instagram feed, Instagram stories or a combination of the options. If the creator accepts a promo, they create a draft of the video to be sent to the label or agency for approval. Once all parties have signed off, the video goes up and the creator gets paid. All of the influencers NPR spoke with said they accept payment for songs that they would already be likely to promote.

"I think we have a responsibility to our audience to stay true to our taste because then they trust us, and they trust that we are sharing music that we love," Keith says. "I think once you start taking stuff out of convenience, it shows on the content."

A rapidly changing industry 

The California TikTok influencer says that within the music content creation field, these paid song and artist campaigns look different today than they did three or four years ago. He says he's noticed a significant shift in the genres that labels are paying to promote — whereas a few years ago there was more money in hip-hop, he says he's now seeing more campaigns geared towards country and alternative rock.

"It's really wild to see where the money goes is where the ears go," he says. "Even though labels can't necessarily force an artist on you or force a genre on you, they can really do a lot of damage for good or for bad with where their budgets are being placed."

He also says he's seeing more investment in cost-per-mille campaigns rather than creator-first advertising. This means a label or agency will announce a campaign around a song or artist, and social media users will submit videos — often edited clips of existing content (music videos or archival interview footage) rather than newly-scripted promos created by influencers — that earn money based on how many views they receive (ex: $2 per thousand views accumulated on each clip).

"Now everything is tied to the performance of a video," he says. "It's fair, but these vertical platforms, especially TikTok, the views are so volatile, it's hard to price yourself as a creator because one video could do 5,000 views and flop, or a video can do a million views and create so much value for for the artist or the label or the campaign."

For content creators who do not accept payment in exchange for coverage, this rapidly-evolving landscape highlights bigger systemic issues. Anthony Fantano is a prominent music influencer who started posting album reviews on YouTube more than a decade ago. His content largely paved the way for the kind of short-form criticism and curation that dominates social media today (his platform, The Needle Drop, originated as a podcast and radio show on Connecticut Public Radio). Fantano has a background in music journalism and says he does not accept any kind of economic incentive to review or cover music, though that hasn't stopped labels from approaching him with offers.

"A lot of these trends are all being reflected by just a widespread desperation that we're seeing in the music industry, in the economy — desperation for money, desperation for attention, because it's all difficult to come by," he says. "It's harder to get paid. It's hard to get people to pay attention to anything consistently."

Fantano says the internet's early promise of decentralized and democratized information has largely been replaced by polarizing content that makes nuanced discourse about anything — music, politics, social issues — increasingly scarce. As inflation rises and the job market slows, social media monetization can be an accessible way to make money. But a lack of transparency about what's sponsored and what's not, particularly in the music space, should give social media users pause, he says.

"I think internet users need to start looking at these platforms that they're getting serviced content on a little bit more skeptically. Geese didn't cheat the algorithm. The algorithm is a cheat already," Fantano says, in reference to the Chaotic Good campaign. "The algorithm is a manipulated, man-made thing that exists purely for the profit motives of the company that it was developed by."

Like Fantano, Australian influencer Derrick Gee, known for his music discovery and commentary videos, says he personally opposes accepting payments. His website includes an "ethics and transparency" section where he outlines that he does not engage in any kind of paid marketing campaigns for labels, artists, management and publishing companies in order to uphold trust with his audience. He says that although this TikTok era of pay-per-play is just the mutation of a long-existing practice in the industry, he believes short-form video establishes a concerning new precedent.

"The problem with it now is that it's like Average Joe from Denver starts with a passion for music and in a year is pushing slop because someone paid him to," Gee says. "I don't think that's the most moral thing for that person or moral thing for the industry to purchase people's faces to be the promoter [of a song.]"

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