For at least the past two years, scammers have been posing as FADER writers and demanding money from independent musicians in return for coverage.
The scammers typically use Instagram and DistroKid, but they’re across social media. They might have stolen our photos to pass themselves off as us more convincingly, or they might just post screenshots of articles we’ve run on the site to their grid. We know from the hundreds — literally hundreds — of people who have reached out to us about this that it usually starts with a DM saying they like the artist’s music, then progresses to asking for a fee for the artist’s name to be mentioned on TheFADER.com. The scammers keep asking for escalating amounts of money until the artist gets suspicious enough to call or email The FADER — or realizes, too late, that it’s a scam.
The FADER does not accept money in return for coverage. No exceptions. Anyone asking for any money at all in return for coverage is a scammer posing as a FADER staffer. DO NOT SEND THEM MONEY.
Regardless of how sophisticated or legitimate a message might seem, how many followers the person has, or how convincingly they’ve ripped off our work — it is a scam. We won’t reach out to you from our personal accounts to arrange coverage. Anyone doing that is trying to take your money. You won’t get anything in return.
