It's been a while since I first published my article on Glacer Fm. It still ranks on Google very highly when you type in Glacer FM, so you think surely that by now people would have figured out it is in fact not a real radio station, but a big scam? Unfortunately, that is not the case. It's time to tell part two of this story. This includes abuse from them directed towards me and exposes just how rubbish the music industry can be. I want to tell you this fact again. Glacer FM is not a real radio station it is a scam.
It's no secret that there are lots of scammers out there in the music business. I've been contacted by many radio stations via Twitter or Facebook. That claim to be real and ask for money to play my music. Of course, these are pretty easy to spot because they don't really have a website and it just comes across as weird however when it comes to Glacer FM, it is just a little more convincing after all they have a website. However, digging a little more into it, you'll see that it isn't actually a real radio station broadcasting. They will try to charge you for radio play. Payola, as it is called, is extremely unfair and is actually illegal. New Artists' Spotlight regularly does a lot of posts to fight back against Payola. It's a really big problem in the music industry and as you will see in this article that a lot of 'semi-reputable' sites seem to encourage this behaviour.
As we can see, I received this email from ReverbNation. No, I don't know how reputable ReverbNation really are. I uploaded some of my music there, but I've certainly never used their paid services. The premise of that service if you pay for membership in order to submit to radios, playlists, press etc. Which may seem pretty handy for the average musician. However, as you can see they are charging you a membership fee to submit to a fake radio station. How has this happened when they could easily Google Glacer FM and find out the truth? It's not just musicians that are being duped but also these websites. Have they really not done their research, or do they really not care? Either way, it's not a good look. Should you be paying a ReverbNation membership to submit to a fake radio station? I think not.
It's not just ReverbNation that has been caught out by these fake lies but also Yahoo! Finance. It seems like anything can be faked on the Internet, and here is another example. How on earth can we trust what we read if this is the case? I suppose no one cares? No one checks? But yet again, the average musician is going to get stung. Forking out money to get played on a radio station that isn't real. The station claims to be from Seattle, but it's not.
The abuse has continued on and off ever since I published my first article. In a way, a lot of it is quite comical. Who is going to believe all these fake accounts spamming the same message? You can check the comments on my original medium article. Overall, it's just a sad situation where a blatant scam can get away with so much. You can see 'Ice cold' Clearly isn't happy at all.
They even took it a step further by making a website claiming that in fact, I am actually the scammer! Wow, that is a plot twist I was not expecting. I'll hand myself into the sheriff's office tomorrow!
From a fake account, they begged me to remove my first article. Of course, I wasn't going to, but it was interesting to see that I might get rewarded in the future. It was almost tempting to take the offer.
So who is behind this? We have to keep sliding down the rabbit hole to find another article on 'Glacer FM'. Apparently, this denies the evidence and gives some background on how this station was formed. Is any of this true? I've been in touch with David Hottle (Owner of Underground FM) and the story gets more confusing and complicated. The whole article reads as if I'm the pantomime villain. It's all a complete lie other than the fact I did write an article and I am a musical artist.
The truth of the issue is Glacer FM was started by a former employee of Underground FM. That much is true. However, his employment was terminated due to his bad practices. So, who is this Joseph? Well, his full name is Tayong Tsi Joseph, and also is a rapper by the name of 'Ice Cold'. Crazy revolution. We can see this from old posts on the internet about Glacer FM radio station.
So Glacer FM is run by Tayong Tsi Joseph who isn't actually from Seattle but from Cameroon. He started off as a rapper in 2011 before starting Glacer FM in the 2020s. His many fake accounts aren't fooling anyone.
The most disappointing part of this story is how a completely fake radio such as this can get onto Groover as a verified creator and also onto ReverbNation it just goes to show how little these sites really do research on their curators. I know I've gone a bit Colombo on you all, but it is quite obvious there is not any actual radio station. The websites hosting these curators should really do better in the vetting process. I believe firmly against payola and all this fake radio rubbish. Please artists look out for yourselves and never ever give them money.