Russ has snarked on the business once more — and this time, he’s taken intention at streaming numbers and the potential to pretend them, which many mainstream artists allegedly do.
The Atlanta rapper took to Twitter on Thursday (September 14) to joke that he would begin pump-faking his streaming numbers, although he has fairly spectacular stats of his personal.
“Real shit, I’m bout to start faking my streams like everyone else [laughing face emojis],” he wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “It’s marketing when you think about it. General person is a sheep.”
He continued: “If you see a song has let’s say 100m streams and you haven’t heard it, you think ‘damn I’m tripping I needa go peep.’ And then the fake streams get you real streams. Such a ridiculous game but f**k it, maybe I’ll film the whole process and drop a doc after.”
Russ then posted a tweet of his personal stats, which had been nothing wanting spectacular. Check out the tweets beneath.
Russ plans to “start faking my streams like everyone else” regardless of big statshttps://t.co/52WCdDsvQrpic.twitter.com/uNh8tM1gTv
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) September 15, 2023
Billy within the final 12 months. Big love preciate y’all pic.twitter.com/HrYDbO275F
— SANTIAGO (@russdiemon) September 15, 2023
Last month, Russ levied some fairly severe allegations in opposition to Billboard and Luminate — the businesses accountable for overseeing the U.S. music charts — accusing them of dishonest him out of hundreds of gross sales of his new album Santiago.
The Atlanta rapper made the claims on Twitter after it was reported that his newest mission had debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200, opening with 42,000 album-equivalent models in its first week.
While that determine could be a good tally for any unbiased artist, Russ felt it was a little bit low — particularly contemplating he was initially projected to crack the Top 10 with over 50,000 units — and accused Billboard and Luminate of robbing him of 10,000 gross sales of their calculations.
“Billboard & Luminate took away ANOTHER 4,000 of my REAL sales over the weekend making that 10,000 sales total they took away from me while allowing major labels to fake their streams and sales and do monopolistic merch bundles (only major labels are allowed to do merch bundles because the only approved vendor is a major label vendor),” he wrote.
“These numbers and charts are made up. The impact however is not. Shoutout to the fans.”
The Chomp MC additionally reshared two outspoken tweets from his supervisor, Milan Ackerman, who accused main labels of “inflating” their artists’ numbers with pretend streams and the businesses accountable for failing to correctly confirm streaming and gross sales information, implying there’s a conspiracy at play.
“I don’t think y’all realize how nuts this is…Billboard charts are inflated by fake data which is being verified by only one company, Luminate,” Russ wrote in his quote-tweet.
“Both Billboard & Luminate are owned by the same company [facepalm emoji] Anyway imma sit back and watch Milan expose the whole shit [popcorn emojis] [crying face emojis].”
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