The TikTok-ification of music marketing
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recent controversy surrounding the rock band Geese and a digital marketing firm Chaotic Good Projects has sparked debate over the tactics firms use to drum up hype for artists online. How can we tell if online hype is real or fake? And does it really matter? Trapital founder Dan Runcie joins Kimberly to break it down. Plus, a final thank you from Kimberly.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- "Geese psyop debate: Rock band raises questions about music marketing" from Fast Company
- "Fake Fans" from Eliza McLamb
- "The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop" from Wired
- "If Geese are a psy-op, so is everything else" from Dazed
- "Are Chaotic Good’s marketing practices bad for listeners?" From CBC Arts
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Transcript
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| 1:04.6 | Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. |
| 1:29.6 | And today, let's dig into something that's bubbling up in the music industry. So there's this rock band out of Brooklyn, New York, called Geese, that really had a breakout year in 2025, releasing their fourth studio album, selling out tours, and building a massive following online. |
| 1:35.7 | But recently, the nature of the band's popularity has sparked a larger conversation about just how musicians break through in the music industry today. |
| 1:40.7 | To help make us smart about this, we're welcoming back Dan Runcie. He's the founder of |
| 1:45.3 | Trappital, a media company covering the business of music, tech, and culture. Welcome back, |
| 1:50.3 | Dan. Kimberly, thanks for having me. Great to be here. So for folks who haven't been following this, |
| 1:56.1 | and I will include myself in that, because my producers are the ones who flagged this for me, |
| 2:02.1 | why is there so much discourse around the band geese and in connection its marketing firm, chaotic good |
| 2:08.2 | projects? So, Kimberly, here's the thing. In the history of music dating back decades, |
| 2:15.0 | artist breaking through and finding unique ways to break through has not always been |
| 2:19.8 | the most linear path where an artist just puts out music and it just happens to get played on |
... |
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