Our benevolent overlords at Apple have a fickle history of what they do and do not allow us to have on the App Store. While apps like Audiobus had a rough path to approval, and beloved classics like Cantor were stripped from legitimacy, Cupertino is quite alright with this SoundBoost bullshit.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this scum on my daily swim through new iTunes apps. Here is an app that lets you pay real money for SoundCloud plays and downloads. The developer also has apps on iTunes for fake Twitter followers and YouTube views. As a content producer this shit really irks me. It's already hard to get your songs and YouTube videos noticed, but shit like this makes it much harder for real content to rise to the top. Artificially inflating views and likes has a big impact on discovery. Every content producer should be furious with this. Think about the algorithms that SoundCloud and YouTube use to serve up recommended related media. I know from personal experience that "Likes" on YouTube play a big role in whether a video will show in related videos lists. I'm seriously disappointed to see Apple allowing this in their walled garden. If they're going to moderate what apps we're allowed to have, they should at least keep deleterious apps out.