Unpaid Shills Wanted
Sony BMG, fresh from being exposed by a blogger for planting stealth, and potentially dangerous, antipiracy code in some of its CD’s, is seeking interns to plug its artists online. The interns will promote artists in Web communities where many people go specifically to share music without the influence of corporate marketers. “Do you blog, have lots of friends at your MySpace page, and love music?” its ad at entertainmentcareers.net asks. Epic Records, a Sony BMG imprint, “is looking for skilled, motivated interns to promote artists on social networking sites like MySpace, Purevolume, Facebook and others.” The ad doesn’t say whether the interns will identify themselves to their online “friends” as agents of Sony BMG. But they’ll get college credit (for this unpaid job, Sony BMG only wants applicants eligible for that) and a bullet point for their résumés, so what’s the difference?