Justin Bieber is starting a huge return to solo music, but he wants his new single to go all the way. After spending several years focusing on the occasional collaboration and his new marriage, he recently dropped "Yummy" for his many devoted fans. Marking the start of a new album era, he wants to begin by achieving the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He and his record company will do whatever it takes to get that result. Many people online took note of what seems to be some underhanded tactics to get the single to #1 and fully put Bieber on blast.
It seems like Justin and his team have done the absolute most to promote this single already. There are a whopping seven music videos on his YouTube page. He released several limited edition cassettes, CD's, and vinyls for the single. He even got someone to make an online video game all for this one song. But that wasn't enough for Team Bieber. They still had a few tricks up their sleeve.
In a now-deleted post, Bieber shared a slideshow detailing how he wants fans to download and stream his song. Fans were requested to play the song on repeat, 24 hours a day. Bieber even suggested those outside of the U.S. download a VPN and set the location to the U.S. before streaming for 24 hours. He also told fans to buy the song from his website numerous times. That's enough "Yummy" to give someone a stomach-ache.
Fans and internet sleuths found even more deleted evidence, including candid videos of Bieber begging fans to stream his single immediately.
After people exposed the blatant gaming of the system on twitter, people seemed quite divided. Either it made Justin look desperate, or it was simply another shady business deal by an overbearing record industry.
So was this a smart business decision? Was it dishonest? What should Bieber have done instead? Deleting these posts definitely seems sketchy, but maybe this isn't anything new in the industry. Only time will tell what sort of music Bieber releases next and the over the top effort he'll go to promote it.
