The Neo Agency Neo Music Group SPOTIFY SCAM. Internet fraud across state lines, $550. No ads, only fake playlists.

DO NOT HIRE theneoagency.com aka neomusicgroup. (https://www.neomusicgroup.net/)

IT IS A FAKE COMPANY AND A SCAM

This con artist clearly changed the company's name, website and social media profiles at some point, I imagine to outrun the fraud charges that are following him around. You'll notice if you go to theneoagency.com and click on the icons for Instagram and Facebook, they both say the page isn't available. No social media links for a music promo website? How did i miss that.

There are other complaints about this company out there, from 2018 and 2019, just like mine. I found them too late unfortunately.

Now the guy is going by the name Matthew, claims he is working for The Neo Agency, which is his fake company for running this scam. The guy is smooth, pleasant on the phone and knows what to say, and his website looks great.

You get started by submitting a song for his Spotify playlists first, via the website. I don't know if the playlists featured on his website are even his, I doubt it. But I filled out the form to talk to someone about the music promotion services, and then I got an email from him saying that he liked the vibe of the music, explaining the basic ads services etc... Everything about it seemed legit. 

I paid him $550 (via Venmo which should've been a red flag) for a targeted ads campaign to iHeart radio, Instagram, Tik Tok and Spotify for my Christmas album that just came out. This was supposed to run for about 25 days and guaranteed we'd reach at least 10,000 monthly listeners. He has campaigns that  run all the way up to $3000 and promise over 100,000 monthly listeners.

I had to send him high-quality photos for the ads, decide on which audiences to target, etc, I mean it really seemed legit.

The campaign began on Dec. 1 (2020). The first week nothing happened at all. I was really disappointed. Then out of the blue the streams for the song we were promoting went up by 900 in one day. But my listener count that day only went up by 20.

Two days later I find through Spotify for Artists that my song has been added to a one-song playlist by a user named Crossxh33084, who has 20 followers. Look him up on Spotify, you'll see. (unless they take my complaint at Spotify seriously and take his account down). This user is adding 6 -10 one-song playlists per day, for all different types of songs, all by unknown independent artists. 

I have not recieved any extra streams from anywhere but this playlist. There were never any ads run. And now "Matthew" will not talk to me anymore, after I called him out on it. You'd think you would want to clear a misconception like that up with one of your clients, right? But he won't respond at all anymore.

I told him to keep the money as a Christmas present, just stop the fraudulent streams, and he won't do it. That's what kind of person this is.  

I also want to make clear that I hired no other indiviual or agency to do promo for this Christmas album, only him, so there's no one else that might've been responsible for the fake Spotify plays. 

And again, other than the fake streams from the one playlist, there has been absolutely no impact on my monthly listeners or streams. There were never any ads run. I have run my own ads in the past and I know about what to expect. I wish that's what I had done this time.

If you don't know, these kind of streams being run up by a single Spotify user can really ruin how the Spotify algorithm suggests your music to people. And folks who hired him for really big campaigns have had their Spotify artist profile deleted permanently. No bueno. I'm just hoping that doesn't happen to me.

I hope this saves whoever is reading it from making the same mistake I did.

My artist name on Spotify is Noel Johnson NDJ.