If Instagram removed the like count on our posts to protect our egos, maybe Spotify and Apple Music should consider hiding the chart rankings from Justin Bieber. “Yummy” has a pretty novel promotional plan: Justin going online and asking his fans to “Stream ‘Yummy,’ please. I need all the help I can get.” Aside from live streaming himself eating cereal and literally asking for more streams (which isn’t too unusual), his official Instagram also posted a guide on how to “cheat” his comeback single “Yummy” to the #1 spot.

The now-deleted Instagram post allegedly instructed his fans to download a VPN (which will allow them to change location to the US, a requirement for Billboard charts), stream the single repeatedly on low volume while they sleep and basically manipulate the streaming numbers to get him on the charts. While it’s not uncommon for fan groups to create guides like this, it’s a whole other thing to have the artist advocate such a dubious tactic. While big charts like the Billboard Top 100 have systems in place to avoid streaming manipulation, a big name artist pulling something like that says a lot about the age of digital streaming devolving the music industry into a clout race.

While big charts like the Billboard Top 100 have systems in place to avoid streaming manipulation, a big name artist pulling something like that says a lot about the age of digital streaming devolving the music industry into a clout race.

“Yummy” has had its fair share of controversy for a repetitive five-chorus pop song. There were also issues of Justin having Parri$ Goebel’s dance film taken down from YouTube. While the video has been reposted and Parri$ has since taken down the lowkey shade on her feed about the incident, fans of the choreographer dancer will now have to raise the view count back from zero. Again with the numbers.

Still from “Yummy” official music video