Today, many in the music business are trying to harness the power of “superfans” – that highly engaged portion of an artist’s audience that regularly attends shows, buys t-shirts, orders physical albums, and obsesses about the artist online. In the digital marketing space, this has led to agencies increasingly turning their attention to fan pages in the hope of capturing the attention of this top listener base online.
“The TikTok influencer campaign has been at the heart of song marketing for some time now,” says Ethan CurtisFounder of PushPlay, a digital marketing agency that has promoted songs like Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit,” JVKE’s “Golden Hour” and Joji’s “Glimpse of Us.” “But as the business became more saturated and expensive, we realized there was interest in creating your own fan pages where you have complete control over the narrative.”
“Fan pages,” secretly created by artist teams, may have become the digital campaign du jour over the past year, but the idea isn’t new. Even before TikTok took over music discovery, management and digital teams were secretly using anonymous accounts to pose as fans on sites like Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter and share interviews, videos and other content about the artists because, as Curtis puts it, “this is a space you can own.”
Curtis is now taking things a step further with his innovative, if controversial, new venture WtrCoolr, a spin-off of his digital company dedicated to creating “fan fiction” pages for artists. Simply put, WtrCoolr is hired to create viral fake stories about his clients, which include Shaboozey and Young Nudy, among others. While Curtis says he’s open to creating videos with all sorts of “imaginative” new narratives, he draws the line at fan fiction that could be “negative” or cause “backlash” for the people depicted in the videos.
The results speak for themselves. A popular TikTok video by WtrCoolr falsely claiming Dolly Parton is Shaboozey’s godmother has 1.1 million views and 121,500 likes so far. Curtis posted it to the digital agency’s fan account @ShaboozeysVault and says the popular video was created by splicing together old interview clips from the artists and some AI voiceovers.
“We’re huge fans of pop culture, fan fiction and satire,” says Curtis. “We see it as our own version of a Marvel universe, but with pop stars.”
All of WtrCoolr’s TikTok accounts note in their bios that their content is “fan fiction.” The videos on these pages also contain “Easter eggs” that Curtis says indicate the videos are fake. Still, many fans fall for it. Many viewers of the Parton video, for example, took it at face value, posting comments like “How many godchildren does Dolly have and where can I sign up?” and “Dolly is an angel on earth.”
Curtis believes that in the future, this new form of “fan fiction” will not only be used to reach fanbases online. He sees potential in the sites serving as “testing grounds” for real-world decisions — such as when one artist decides to collaborate with another — to see how the fanbase reacts. “Traditionally, you can’t look before you do something,” he says. “Maybe we’ll do that in the future.”
What was the first “fan fiction” post that went viral on WtrCoolr?
It was the video of Shaq, who is a superfan of the rapper Young Nudy (10.4 million views, 1.7 million likes on TikTok). We had been working on (and promoting) the Young Nudy song “Peaches & Eggplants” primarily on the influencer side. We had dances and all kinds of different trends going on. It became a top rap song at that point and then we sold the client (Young Nudy’s team) to create one of these fan pages where we just tried a bunch of stuff. The first narrative video we tried was this video where we found footage of Shaq – I think it was at Lollapalooza – where he was standing in front of the crowd (for another artist) vibing and headbanging. It was a really fun visual. We just got clever with the editing and made up the story that Shaq was showing up at every Young Nudy show and then it went crazy viral.
It was really exciting to see. It brought fans to Nudy and existing Nudy fans were really excited to see Shaq get involved. And then there was a lot of sympathy for Shaq. Lots of comments like “Protect Shaq at all costs” and “Shaq is a damn near perfect person.” It was a positive experience all around. We wrote on our pages that it’s a fan site and fanfiction. We’re not saying it’s the truth. We’re just having fun and we’re letting people know that.
After the video went viral, there was quite a stir. Weren’t there some rap blogs that posted about the video and believed it to be true?
I don’t know if they necessarily believed it to be true. We didn’t really talk to anyone, but it was definitely being passed around – whether it was because of that or just because it was such a funny video. Even Nudy responded and thought it was funny. I think the label contacted Shaq and invited him to a show and he thought it was funny but was on the other side of the country that day and couldn’t come.
I’m sure there are some people who think this is true, but in many videos we have Easter eggs at the end that make it clear that it is not true. Then we write in our bios that it is fanfiction.
Do you think it could be a bad thing if fans and blogs believe these videos to be real, only to later find out that they are fake?
I don’t know if anything is really bad. We don’t claim it’s true, and we just have fun, spin stories, and basically say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if?” or “Wouldn’t it be heartwarming if?” I don’t think we ever really address important things that could lead to negative energy or backlash. We just try to make funny stuff that fans enjoy. Just funny little moments. It’s no different than taking a video out of context and slapping meme captions on it.
Do you see this as the future of memes?
I do. I also think what we’re doing becomes a kind of testing ground for real collaborations or TV show concepts in the future. I could imagine a label coming to us and asking us to test how a new collaboration between Drake and Kendrick would be received after the falling out. They could say, “Can you do a post about it and we can see if people attack Kendrick for backing down or if fans go crazy when they get together?” We could see if it’s a disaster or potentially the biggest release of their careers. Traditionally, you can’t look before you decide. Maybe we’ll do that in the future. But even now with the Shaq video, it basically proved that people would love to see Shaq go to an unexpected show and rage in the front row. I mean, if it was so successful on social media, why wouldn’t it be as successful in real life?
It seemed like in the Shaboozey and Dolly Parton video, Shaboozey’s name and other new phrases were inserted using an AI voice filter. Do you rely heavily on AI for these videos or is it mostly about careful editing?
Most of it is just clever editing. Every now and then we might change a word or something (using AI), but the majority of it is just stitching clips together.
How time-consuming is it to create these videos?
The process has changed. It used to be a lot more time-consuming before we realized that clever editing is more efficient. In the beginning, we would write scripts for the videos, run them through AI, and then try to find clips that fit the scripts and stuff like that. You have to match the cut with the artist’s lips to make it look like lip-syncing. That’s just super time-consuming. Then we realized it’s easier to just define a basic goal, search the internet and see what we can find. Based on that, we develop a story so that we only have to use a few wrong (AI-powered) words here and there, and then we cut out of the video, show some snippets from a music video or something like that. That makes it more efficient.
To your knowledge, is WtrCoolr the first team in digital marketing to try to create these videos with false narratives and stories, or do you see this kind of thing all over the internet?
We were definitely the first to do it. There are definitely people emulating it now. We see it generally in the content that exists online, especially on meme sites. It becomes part of the culture.
Do you discuss your fan fiction story ideas with the artist before you implement them?
We work with them and discuss ideas. There is as much communication as they want. Some artists want to know what’s going on, but others just don’t want to be involved.
So far, no one seems to have had a problem with being used in the videos. You even see it as a positive thing. But are you worried about the legal consequences of using someone’s image to promote an artist or idea that you don’t actually support?
We don’t claim it’s true. We add disclaimers that it’s just fanfiction. So I think if we claimed it was true, that would be a different story, but that’s not what we do.
It says that on all the page bios, but not in the actual video subtitles, right?
It’s listed in the profiles and in a lot of videos we just do Easter eggs at the end that kind of make it clear that it’s a joke.
I thought the idea you mentioned earlier was interesting – the idea that you can test collaborations or things without having to involve the artist first, whether it’s a Drake-Kendrick collaboration or something else. It reminds me of when people tease a song before it is officially released. Do you think that is a fair comparison?
Absolutely. What TikTok did for teasing songs, TikTok has done for teasing situations.
This story was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter, Machine Learnings. Sign up for Machine Learnings and Billboard’s other newsletters here.
