You might have recently seen the term ‘industry plant’ going around in reference to the band The Last Dinner Party, but I think we need to clear some things up on what it means and if it’s an accurate description.
The term industry plant refers to an artist who becomes popular due to their connections in the industry but presents themselves as self-made. Many people say that The Last Dinner Party falls under this category but the term has also been used to describe artists like Wet Leg and Clairo. So, the question is are they industry plants? In my opinion, no they aren’t.
I don’t think it is fair to say that that The Last Dinner Party are trying to portray that they are ‘making it on their own’, but even if they are, so what? No one in the music industry is making it on their own, if you don’t have connections the chance of you making it isn’t great. There is a good chance The Last Dinner Party had those connections. There is nothing wrong with using those connections to get further in life, unfortunately that is how almost every industry is set up. However, this shouldn’t take away from the hard work artists put in to make music, because at the end of the day no number of connections can make people enjoy and listen to your music.
I think we need to clear some things up on what the term means and if it’s an accurate description.
The Last Dinner Party are successful because they make good music and people want to listen to them. This is where I think the main issue of the term ‘industry plants’ comes in. When people use this term, it is almost always exclusively used to describe female artists. This completely takes away from the hard work these women have put in to make themselves successful. Of course, these artists have teams behind them, all big musicians have people to handle everything from tours to marketing for them, but that does not make them industry plants.
When seeing these claims online it’s important to think about if they’re true or if the music industry is just designed to make everything harder for successful women.
