Really disappointed.
I chose Forbid Media to run a campaign for an artist because I’m a fan of Andrew's YouTube content. I spent $7,000 on an ad campaign with Forbid Media, fully understanding that results from advertising aren’t guaranteed. However, after several months, I've seen zero growth on the song or ongoing engagement from the campaign, with the artist’s Spotify metrics quickly reverting back to what they were before. This experience has made me feel like the campaign was largely a waste of time and money.Unfortunately, Forbid Media’s service didn’t feel personalised or responsive to my needs. Most communication was done over email (no virtual meetings), with days between responses, and I wasn’t asked about important details like whether I had video assets available or what my target audience would be. I received minimal input on the campaign itself and was only informed it was live after a week with little consultation.It was also concerning that I wasn’t shown the ads before they went live, especially since the artist I was promoting has a distinct brand identity. Not knowing how they were being represented online left me feeling uncomfortable about the campaign's direction and effectiveness.I see Forbid Media's ads on instagram a lot (as well as videos under their different alias accounts). It seems they rely heavily on the same template: videos featuring copyrighted content (like Spiderman or The Notebook) with yellow text overlaid reading “100% comic book vibes” or “100% sad vibes,” followed by a list of (questionably) similar artists. This approach is so low-effort and disappointing given the high cost of $7,000 for what appeared to be templated ads with minimal customisation.Since the campaign ended, I have started running ads myself, and I've seen far better results for a fraction of the cost. The growth and engagement for the artist has increased dramatically. This has only reinforced my view that Forbid Media’s service didn’t deliver the value I was expecting. For $7,000, I anticipated a level of expertise that would outperform what I could do on my own.
Alex
Good experience
It was a good experience working with Forbid Media, we’re very happy with the results.
Nina J
Best organic promotion service I've used
After releasing a few albums and struggling to reach potential listeners (I tried playlist promotions and Omari for Facebook ads) I was referred to Forbid by a friend and I have gotten the best results from their custom campaigns of my music. They are transparent in the costs and results, prepare excellent ads (my campaign has been promoting my music on Spotify through Facebook/Instagram ads), and the ratio of saves to listeners has been around 60% and the streams per listener is now between 6-7 per month. Their organic method has helped me connect with thousands of new listeners who are now fans. They are also very receptive to ideas and tweaks - great communication.
Fr. Maximilian Mary Dean
I've had a great experience with…
I've had a great experience with several campaigns promoting songs with Forbid. They're communicative, skilled, and very hands-on. Whenever I have questions about why something is performing well or poorly they're able to explain what's going on. I'm getting more leverage working with Forbid than I would running these campaigns myself.
Rav P
A Good Experience
My overall experience with Wes and the Forbid team was a good one. They were communicative, attentive, knowledgeable, patient, flexible and willing to accommodate my custom requests in regard to my campaign. My Spotify monthly listeners grew during the campaign, perhaps not as much as I would have hoped or expected, but I realize that’s not something Forbid (or anyone) can exactly guarantee. Obviously, there are many variables beyond Forbid’s expertise. Was the temporary increase in Spotify traffic worth the cost even if a percentage of listeners stick around, long-term, post-campaign? I’m, personally, not sure but that’s subjective and dependent on each client’s individual expectations. At the end of the day, Forbid delivered what they promised.
Mark Bacino
Solicit a budget while lacking transparency
They try to solicit a budget while not being transparent about what they actually do. Dishonest right off the bat.
Justin Maarten de Vries
Disappointed
For the amount spent ($6k), I had hoped for far better results. Massive bummer considering I love the content Andrew puts out and still support his YouTube channel.
Customer k
I was very happy with the amount of saves and playlist adds!
Forbid ran campaigns for multiple songs for us. The results were very good. I originally found them on YouTube. Andrew Southworth has excellent videos and does an exceptional job explaining how all the moving parts work together. Forbid answered all my questions and was flexible with some different things I wanted to test with the campaigns. I was very happy with the amount of saves and playlist adds the campaigns generated!
Jesse
Knowledgeable, expert, and focused
Transparent, knowledgeable, experienced, and also patient with my constant barrage of elementary questions. They're willing to go a little extra and answer general, and even more specific, questions about digital marketing, the music business in general, and Spotify.
customer
Thanks
The team, including Frank, at Forbid did a great job with my track. I was running at around 127 monthly listeners before I started with them and am now up over 4k.Communication is great and they show proven results.The only thing I would like, is more detailed breakdown of where costs are associated and more transparency around costings.Thanks
Consumer
Bad results and not transparent
We spent $6000 with Forbid Media. The deal is that they keep half and manage your FB ads with the other half. Here were the results:26,010 Total Visits19,992 Unique Users11,620 Clicks to ServiceThat means we paid about 50 cents to get someone to click into our Spotify. Andrew shows on his Youtube that they get 20 cent conversion costs or so -- it would have stretched our money a lot further to just run ads ourselves.The thing that I really don't like about the Forbid Media experience though is that they don't show you the ads that they create for you, only the results. We still have no idea how we were being represented on the internet and that is really concerning. There's also no insight we received into what worked and what didn't work in the ads. We've run our own ads (that were honestly just awful -- random clips with our song) and the performance was way way better (no A/B testing or anything at all).Also -- they don't tailor the ad targeting to where you want results or anything. Most of our money went to Mexico even though we're NYC-based. That's... ok, streams are streams, but not having any controls over that is weird.I understand "maybe your song just sucked and that's why the performance was mid" so feel free to be the judge (Rearrange by Hairpin) -- it has performed well on a lot of playlists despite. I also think that if you pay for ads to be created they should be able to get good performance anyways.In any case -- the money just doesn't work favorably because the cut they take is just way too high. If you feel confident in your track you're better off putting your audio over your logo on an Instagram post and then boosting it.
Alex McGourty
