Excellent observation regarding the street musician (busker) faring better with a little grease visible to potential audience / donors! I'd like to point out t

Excellent observation regarding the street musician (busker) faring better with a little grease visible to potential audience / donors! I'd like to point out that the music industry has long been a bastion of other techniques as well, some more underhanded than others, depending on one's moral compass. The notion of Payola is still alive and well, and has changed with the new music and marketing avenues. I'm not in a position to name specifics, but there's word of payment for review / features, which seems the most blatant. Personally I can attest to navigating all sorts of sketchy "Promote through us!" type operations that may or may not be doing legit advertising... Getting a network of Twitter or Soundcloud followers - or appearing to have one - is a pretty standard objective, which I guess why there exist services or short-cuts to those ends.