In The Latest Industry Swipe, Russ Threatens To Start 'Faking My Streams Like Everyone Else'

Russ, an independent rapper, has taken yet another shot at the industry, declaring that he will begin ‘faking his streams just like everyone else.’ Here’s the most recent.

On Thursday, the rapper quipped that he would begin faking his stream numbers, artificially inflating them to generate’real streams.’ “Real shit, I am boutta start faking my streams like everyone else,” the rapper says in a now-deleted tweet, which is followed by multiple cry-laughing emoticons.

“When you think about it, it is marketing.” If you notice a song has 100 million views and you have not heard it, you think ‘dang I am tripping, I need to peep’ and then the bogus streams get you actual streams. Such a terrible game, but f*ck it, maybe I will tape the whole thing and release a documentary afterwards,” the rapper concludes.

Russ has leveled significant claims against Billboard and Luminate, which records Billboard music chart sales in the United States. When his album Santiago opened at #12 on the Billboard 200, despite expectations of getting into the top ten, Russ took to Twitter to express his disappointment.

“Billboard and Luminate took away ANOTHER 4,000 of my REAL sales over the weekend, bringing the total they took away from me to 10,000 sales while allowing major labels to fake their streams and sales and do monopolistic merch bundles,” the rapper claims. “Because the only approved vendor is a major label vendor, only major labels are allowed to do merch bundles.” These figures and graphs are entirely fictitious. The impact, on the other hand, is not. “Thank you, fans.”

A post shared by DJ Akademiks (@akademiks)

Milan, Russ’s manager, chimed in to argue that large labels use streaming farms to boost artist streams. “Big labels are hiding their fake streams in plain sight, and no one is stopping him,” Milan wrote on Twitter. “Some of the artists on these labels are not even aware that their streams are inflated until it is time to sell ‘hard tickets.'” At that point, the figures do not add up. It is time to validate on-chain stream and sales data.”

“The current music charts are inflated by fake data, which is only verified by one company [Luminate].” The company that verified the data is also the entity that owns the ‘charts.’ “It is a rigged game,” he writes on Twitter. Penske Media owns both Billboard and Luminate. P-MRC Data was rebranded as Luminate by Digital Music News last year. MRC Data, Variety Business Intelligence, Music Connect, BDS Radio, and SoundScan are among the services provided by Luminate.

In The Latest Industry Swipe, Russ Threatens To Start ‘Faking My Streams Like Everyone Else’

Russ, an independent rapper, has taken yet another shot at the industry, declaring that he will begin ‘faking his streams just like everyone else.’ Here’s the most recent.

Download The Radiant App To Start Watching!