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Popular Music Subreddit Caught Record Labels Masquerading as Users to Promote Their Artists

Another reveal of ethically-questionable marketing tactics in the music industry, must be Tuesday.

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In the latest music marketing saga, the popular Reddit subreddit r/indieheads has banned record labels from its community. Moderators investigated an influx of new, anonymous members to the online community. They discovered that these anonymous users were actually record labels posing as Reddit users through burner accounts.

These accounts only seemed to comment on posts about specific artists. The investigation revealed that these artists were all on the labels’ rosters. Using anonymous Reddit accounts, they were promoting their clients in an environment that’s supposed to thrive on organic interaction.

“We’re not going to reveal who these labels are at this time,” one of the r/indieheads moderators wrote in an Instagram post. “But it was disappointing to find them engaging with our subreddit with a near-total lack of........

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