So many red flags!!
TLDR: Creator Uplift promotes songs through botted spam accounts on Instagram and AI-generated articles on community blog-posting sites and I believe the streams are coming from bots.
When I signed up for the monthly $99 plan with creator uplift, I was promised a wide array of promotions. Within one business day of my track being accepted, I started receiving more streams. After reaching out to the support team to get more info on the avenues they were taking to promote my song, I was given two links to articles and two social media shoutouts that had been posted. The articles were posted to Live Positively and Medium (two websites where anybody can post blogs) under the same name following a similar AI-generated format that copy and pasted an optional form I filled out for my promotion, but oddly enough the articles were different despite being from the same person. I looked into this person and found another article that was labeled as AI-generated on Vocal Media. This "author" has only posted within the last two months, but have posted a massive volume given such a small time frame. All the articles posted under the "author" on Vocal Media are labeled by the website as AI-generated. There are also places to interact with these articles such as liking, commenting, and sharing but there are no interactions made.
In regards to the social media shoutouts, both accounts have had minimal activity since 2018. One account was posting borderline NSFW spam content linking to a page that no longer exists. The interactions are incredibly low despite having a large amount of followers and the poorly optimized SEO usernames don't even appear unless the entire username is types in. How were they able to gain so many followers despite all of this? Bots. The amount of interaction combined with zero interaction from the articles doesn't add up to the 50+ streams I am receiving daily.
The support team was quick to respond to my messages where I laid most of this out for them. They only said they would "look into it" but quite frankly this should not have ever happened in the first place considering they are the ones allegedly reaching out on my behalf to promote my song. I did not sign up for fake streams and interactions. I was given a refund, but that is not enough. This business needs to take accountability for engaging in scams and taking advantage of smaller artists with small budgets. I hope this helps steer some people away, considering most reviews I have read seem to be unaware of the source of these streams.
Antwoord van Creator Uplift
Hi June,
We’re sorry to hear that your experience did not meet your expectations. As mentioned in your review, we responded promptly to your initial outreach and issued a full refund upon your request.
There are a few misrepresentations of our service that we’d like to address:
1. There seems to be some confusion regarding when your promotion began. If you noticed an increase in streams one day after your acceptance, it would not have been a result of our campaign, as this timing suggests it was driven by natural daily fluctuations or other activities you may have undertaken. Preparing outreach, creators reviewing songs, drafting content, and posting it naturally requires time. This delay was particularly pronounced in your case, as your campaign was initiated during the holiday season. It would have been helpful if this had been raised during our previous communication so we could have clarified this earlier.
2. We have confirmed with the blog author that their work was completed manually. Additionally, we have not found any evidence of the AI label you mentioned. If it were present, we would terminate our relationship with the author, as such activity is strictly prohibited within our network. When you raised your concerns, we immediately began investigating the matter. However, your follow-up refund request just four hours later did not provide adequate time to conclude our inquiry. Despite this, we proceeded with your full refund as a good faith measure.
3. The influencers we work with are active on their respective platforms, and some may prioritize story content over profile posts. Upon review, one of the posts that shared your song has already garnered 165 likes. As mentioned in our email, we only shared a couple early example placements to give you a sneak peak ahead of our formal report. Additionally, some creators posted your content as stories, providing reach beyond visible metrics such as likes and comments. It’s also important to note that not all users who see content engage directly with it, meaning the overall reach of a post is often significantly higher than its visible interactions. As a reminder, Creator Uplift does not sell streams. Our goal is to help artists expand their reach across multiple online platforms, leaving users to decide whether to engage with your music.
We’re disappointed that we weren’t given the opportunity to clarify these points before your review. Nevertheless, your full refund has been processed, and we sincerely wish you continued success in your musical career.
