It's a common practice to get songs placed on popular playlists on services like Spotify and YouTube to achieve higher streaming numbers. Maybe you can't directly buy views like you can buy Twitter followers but you can easily place yourself in channels that will get you a lot more visibility. And yes, that is considered payola.
I'm talking about right now. Youtube back then was so messy and many views kept getting deleted because they were fake. (Biggest example: Avril's Girlfriend views)
Payola is completely another thing. I was talking about directly buying views. VEVO was mainly launched to become like a service for music videos and make only one version of the video available instead of 100 versions.
I know PF had a lot of views but definitely not 300m... it was most likely combined.
Actually they can be inflated through promotion tactics that cost money.
Yeah, didn't Gaga tweet some link to her followers that would endlessly play the Applause video to try and get some extra streaming points only for Vevo to clock her?
She tried so hard to go A list this era
