This is The Guardian.

Today, the fake fans behind your favourite band.

You're wrong?

Yesterday. Let Both do it. Discovering new music you love, I'd argue, is still one of the most satisfying ways to feel good.

And so when fans flocked a geese in the last year and made its frontman Cameron Winter

the most talked about indie star of the moment,

it felt like a genuine rush of emotion and connection.

A win for the grizzled Brooklyn aesthetic

that hadn't been hip for at least a decade.

They ruled end-of-year lists.

Their tours sold out.

If you've never heard of them, I promise this was a big deal for a band that were barely

born the last time New York bands were called.

But what if all the hype wasn't entirely authentic?

What if it was cooked up to make geese go viral?

The story of how one band dominates the cultural discourse would have been an argument left

for the music press and indie blogs.

But in 2026, it's a saga that reveals

a whole lot more about how we all consume music now, how we find it, how it's fed to us,

and how the industry and musicians are desperately trying to adapt to technology that threatens

their very existence.

From The Guardian, I'm Noshia Nikbal. Today in Focus, what does it take to create the hot new thing in music?

...