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In my house, my kid asks Alexa to make a fart noise. It's funny, but what good does it do? little to none besides make you laugh. But did you know when your kid says to "Play poop" that osme artists make money? What!?!? No, for real.
Matt Farley is an extremely prolific songwriter who has mastered the art of the SEO song. He has recorded more than 23,000 songs that are often very short and include phrases and names that someone might search for — lots of celebrity names, common first names. And incredibly, this is a sound business model — Farley is able to generate a modest income from his catalog. (Disclosure: He wrote a 2014 song “Katie Notopoulos Is a Talented Writer, Oh Yeah,” but as a talented writer, I won’t let this compliment cloud my reporting.)
In his vast collection of songs covering a wide variety of topics, his top hits are all scatological in nature. His biggest hit is “Poop Poop Poop Poop Song.”
The songs are surprisingly good; he makes music in a broad range of styles. Farley is in on the joke; he knows this is funny. You could see his SEO-gaming songs as a cynical cash grab, or look at his oeuvre as a decadelong performance art piece that comments on the nature of technology’s warping effect on art under capitalism.
Recording under the artist names the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke, and Pee, Farley has a wide array of songs devoted to this particular human experience. A 2021 profile of Farley on Debugger notes that when he noticed a trend of the poop songs being popular, he assumed it was because kids were getting into their parents’ Spotify accounts and typing in naughty words.
However, when I spoke with Farley over the phone from his home in Massachusetts, I floated the idea to him that it was in fact preschool-age kids yelling “poop” into Alexa-enabled devices. The theory made sense to him — in fact, it lined up with the data he had seen.
So the next time you get mad at your kid for asking Alexa to say dirty words, make fart noises, or just sing about poop, someone could be making a living from that. See, and your mom and dad said your silly songs would never get you anything or get you paid. Take that parents