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Totally fake band touring Europe...

pipFunk

pipFunk

Feb 1, 2005
181
67
#1
This is fascinating... this guy has literally been playing his sold out 'Breaking the World Tour' to empty rooms across UK!

'Fake band' Threatin just played a UK tour to... absolutely no-one - NME

Does anyone have any background on him? Purportedly, he comes from LA. There's Facebook, and Twitter and Merchandise and so on, but no audience. None, zero, nada... on the plus side, he's made the national music press!

Is it an expensive joke? Is it some kind of Spinal Tap spoof? The mind boggles...
 
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#5
I imagine this is more common than you think, to some capacity or another.

In business, you lose money for a few years before turning a profit. Whether you sell product at a loss, or sell less product then you estimate in the future, or simply aren’t efficient at the business.

Either way, seems like par for the course for me. I know many don’t consider music a business, but it is, to those who intend to make money with it at least.
 
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#13
knumbskull said:
Probably large amounts of his own (or someone else’s) money thrown at it...

Reminds me of Lights Over Paris guy, who went to jail for defrauding the bank to fund his rock star fantasy.
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Rob Talllll...who, in real life, was rather amusingly all of 5'2" in lifts :roflmao:

To me it's a much more embarrassing story for the banks loan system: this guy was given millions of dollars with zero collateral and a thinly veiled cover.

Literally all a loan officer had to do was Google "Lights Over Paris" to know that there was zero equity in the (at that point, IMAGINARY) band.
 
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#16
BassAndReeds said:
I imagine this is more common than you think, to some capacity or another.

In business, you lose money for a few years before turning a profit. Whether you sell product at a loss, or sell less product then you estimate in the future, or simply aren’t efficient at the business.

Either way, seems like par for the course for me. I know many don’t consider music a business, but it is, to those who intend to make money with it at least.
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lol... as a business, you can speculate to accumulate of course, but lying to the outlets where you intend to sell your wares, for example about how many 'units' you have on pre-order is probably counterproductive, I'd have thought?

The music business, in the UK at least, is pretty much split into 'scene' venues where non-established bands cut their teeth and there are fewer of them every year. They are intimately connected through promoters, tour managers, booking agents and so on, all of whom know each other. All of them will now be aware of what has happened, because it isn't common over here (that's why it has made the music press) and, from what I'm hearing from friends in the business, they're not very impressed with Mr Threatin's 'business model', least of all the venues that have lost money as a result! So that doesn't seem like a win...

I don't think this act will find anyone to book him again in a hurry, nor a band to support... though, honestly, I'm still waiting for it to be revealed as some kind of elaborate hoax, perhaps a vehicle for Sacha Baron Cohen, or something?
 
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#17
callofcthulhu said:
Not sure why this is newsworthy.

I've been on plenty of bizarre bills where the headliner was clearly a bought-and-paid for deal with 10k+ views/likes/follows etc. who brought 0 bodies through the door. These bands do typically seem to come out of LA.

"poopy LA band bought likes and played for no one" is just another Tuesday night in San Francisco.
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It's newsworthy because London's a lot further from LA than San Fransisco! There's some effort, as well as money, behind this... :laugh:
 
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#18
arbiterusa said:
That's really not what I would call a fake band. Few make it up the ladder the hard way. I could give examples of bands that started just like this but I would be typing all day.
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...no band has ever "made it up the ladder" by doing this.

Maybe you didn't read the article, but when you claim $1000+ in advanced ticket sales (which all end up being from fake accounts in Brazil) and $0 walks through the door instead, that's a huge problem.
 
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#19
pipFunk said:
Yes, I've heard this happens... and bands complain about pay to play in venues! :rollno:
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There's a huge difference between paying $500 to "headline" an empty club and paying $500 to play direct support for major band in a sold out show.
 
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