Photo Credit: Brett Jordan
What does it take to make music and artists themselves go viral in 2026? An army of social media accounts preying on impressionable fans doesn’t hurt: Marketing agency Chaotic Good Projects has scrubbed its website amid controversy over its promotional services.
That controversy was seemingly set in motion by a March Billboard interview with co-founders Jesse Coren and Andrew Spelman. During the sit down, the individuals, who established Chaotic Good in February 2025 after working together at artist management company Mutual Friends, discussed the nature of their new business.
Featuring quotes like “everything on the internet is fake” and “controlling the narrative is really, really important,” the conversation was all but sure to raise eyebrows. In brief, Coren and Spelman described leveraging an elaborate network of social profiles to pump out comments, shape the public’s perception of musical works, and presumably drive commercial results in the process.
“Most people see a video or something about an album that came out, and that first comment they see becomes their opinion, even when they haven’t heard the whole album,” Coren summed up. “It’s really important for us to make sure we’re ahead of it and controlling that narrative in the direction we want.”
“What we do at Chaotic Good with our management clients is: The second the SNL performance drops at midnight, you should post 100 times saying that was the best performance of the year,” Spelman added. “The question is how you do that at scale. It takes a lot of work and infrastructure, but controlling the narrative is really, really important.”
Building on these remarks, the makeup of Chaotic Good’s staff probably won’t come as a surprise. A cursory glance at the appropriate LinkedIn page shows a team dominated by college-age persons (not necessarily employees) who know how to use social platforms.
This includes a number of interns and contractors – besides one individual who seemingly spends his days mass-posting selfie TikToks overlaid with mind-numbing text about broad subjects like relationships, feelings, and the emotional rollercoaster that is life.
Naturally, each of the individual’s videos looks to contain music, a large portion of it made by rising talent – raising additional questions about the operation’s precise scope.
Speaking of scope, artist Eliza McLamb in a Substack deep-dive broke down Chaotic Good’s services, high-profile client list (more here in just a moment), and the wider implications of “fake fans.”
According to the in-depth piece, shortly after publishing, the marketing agency dramatically scaled back its website by allegedly removing all references to a self-explanatory “narrative campaign” offering.
At present, narrative campaign services are no longer being advertised on Chaotic Good’s barebones homepage, which also lacks a client list. Nevertheless, subsequent articles and Reddit discussions have zeroed in on the alleged presence of Sombr, Geese, and Alex Warren on this list, further including Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Benson Boone, Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Cuco, Laufey, Quinn XCII, Reneé Rapp, Alex Warren, and Lainey Wilson, to name some.
In other words, emerging and established acts alike appear to have utilized Chaotic Good. As for the episode’s broader significance, there’s much to unpack here – especially about where we are as a society when comments attributable to anonymous “users” are shaping conversations and opinions.
But this will have to wait for future coverage. For proper musicians who aren’t tapping third parties to pad their socials by any means, the situation is another indicator of a rigged game that rewards a whole lot aside from genuine artistry.
If it’s any consolation, one can fake followers and comments and streams, but all the digital shenanigans in the world won’t draw massive crowds of excited fans to live shows.
Without mentioning any names, it’s certainly curious when a major-label act boasting roughly 100 million combined social followers and Spotify monthly listeners is playing 2,000-capacity venues. And yes, the artist happens to be a Chaotic Good client.