Bestseller Market Scam
What’s up Smart Rapper Gang?
As you know, we at Smart Rapper do our very best to keep you guys informed, and to prevent you from falling for music industry scams.
Well today, yet again, another scam fell into my lap. I need to pass on my knowledge and awareness of these obvious red flags to you guys so that every time you get emails like these, you know better than to give them a DIME.
Today’s scam is the Bestseller Market scam.
Here are 3 red flags that you can look for in any automated email you are sent from a “music promotion service”. Keep in mind, all of these red flags are seen in this email I received from Bestseller Market, and I will be using examples from their message.
Grammatical and spelling errors/poor word choice
An official music promotion company would NEVER send an email to a potential client that is RIDDLED with spelling and grammatical mistakes. If you read the email, and it sounds like English is their third language and they’ve only been speaking it for a couple of years, odds are it is a scam. Here’s an example from the email I received from the Bestseller Market scam.
“Simply because when your lead click your advert link and land on your artiste page, the system will only play one of your track then skip to another popular track from another artiste and then to another artiste.”
I did not change a single letter in that excerpt.
Another thing I noticed in this email was that he used a term that a long-time English speaker would never use in a professional email: human traffic. And he wasn’t talking about what it sounds like.
“Also i once did an advanced test on facebook ads traffic and i found out that i wasn’t getting as much human traffic compared to what i was being charged.”
The I’s aren’t even capitalized, and neither is Facebook.
“Genuine traffic” would have been a lot better, and not sounded like he was talking about human trafficking. “Authentic traffic” “organic traffic” “real traffic” I can think of ten more examples of better phrasing, but because this is probably an off-shore scam, this did not cross his mind. Even if he referred to automated bots to contrast with so-called “human traffic” that would have made a difference.
Again, this is only ONE red flag, but it is the most instantaneously obvious one when skimming over an email. Here’s another red flag:
Streams, likes, and plays for a fee
Let me use another example from the BestSeller Market scam email to show you why this is a red flag.
“Rank your track , increase streams and monthly listeners via playlists 👉 (link)”
This link took 30 SECONDS to load. This website probably hasn’t been updated in years because today’s websites load in 10 seconds or less by STANDARD.
Let’s analyze this page:
Buy organic Spotify listens and go viral for only $30?? Why isn’t everybody doing this?
Because it’s a scam.
Also, peep the spelling mistake (yet again).
“INCREASE LISTERS AND STREAMS”
Listers? You mean listeners? They were in such a hurry to steal your money with this BS service, they brushed right over an obvious spelling mistake. Let’s look at another link:
“Let us activate your instagram for celebrity status 👉 (link)”
“CeLeBriTy sTaTuS”. Give me a break. I clicked on the link, and yet again, the page took 30 SECONDS to load, but we’ll get into the website itself later. Look at the page. It says:
Any website that makes promises like this is offering FAKE engagement, FAKE likes, FAKE follows just to inflate your numbers. And for $50??? Y’all are smarter than that.
Bestseller Market Scam: Terrible-looking, scam-y website
My first glance at this website reassured me that it is outdated. What about this home screen is at least three years old?
The last iPhone that had a home button was the iPhone 8 back in 2017. Maybe I’m being too nitpicky, but as a company, don’t you want your webpages to look up-to-date?
It also had this tacky falling hearts animation over the entire website, and a glowing “free call” button that doesn’t even work.
They have no credibility or social proof of artists who they’ve helped grow. Some of their products say “PROOF” or “WITH PROOF OF WORK”, which means you have to PURCHASE THE PRODUCT before seeing any proof, which I’m sure there isn’t any. Once they have your money, what’s the point of showing you proof?
Lastly, look at this poor guy’s review. He spent money on this service and received NOTHING in return.
Take it from this lady as well:
Do not give this company any money. I’m sure they are waiting for the day some poor fool purchases their most expensive service, which is $1,500! That won’t be one of you Smart Rappers though. We wouldn’t fall for the Bestseller Market scam.
Keep hustin’ gang, I’ll see you at the top.