Nice work – looks like I only touched the tip of the iceberg! I think what the Google results show are sites that all display reviews from Amazon. Apparently since the review engine is web based some spammer figure out a way to automate entries into it. In fact this has been going on for at least a couple years because I found an entry from Oct. 2002 with the same title and text! What’s kind of funny is that it was for a Christmas album from “Jive Bunny” – whatever the heck that is! My point being that they didn’t even selectively target just “New Age” musicians – making their spam even more blatantly obvious!
Well, I don’t know anybody at Amazon but I sent a message through their “suggestion box” anyway. I asked them to both clean out the “reviews” in question and also not support artists who employ such tactics. I thought about writing to customer support at SoothingMusic.com, but, since it’s either them or their boy Mehdi who’s employing the spammers, I figured that’s just a piss into the wind at best.
No luck finding Mehdi himself either. Turns out that “Mehdi” is from Islamic theology meaning “divinely guided one”. (Ouch – don’t make me laugh so hard!!!)
Victor posted this comment and I busted out laughing. Thanks, man! Glad I have a simple name and not one like Mehdi, a name with so much potent meaning – that’s setting oneself up for failure, yes? I sent a message to amazon customer service as well and included my Google search with the exact phrase. I suggested adding a field called Suspected Spam underneath each Customer Review.
I am also wondering about this: couldn’t amazon have a flag pop up whenever the exact same headline is used more than, say 5 times in any Customer Review? Then they could investigate and quickly figure out whether that was spam.
Good job, Detective Victor! :)
Listening to Mehdi’s free Amazon downloads now…he’s not bad, but I’d have a much easier time supporting the man if he rode on his own virtue and skill, instead of the virtue and skill of other, more accomplished musicians…(and if all of his songs didn’t sound the exact same)
Hey, I was reading all the raving reviews for his seven “volumes” on Amazon…does anyone else think they’re all from the same guy who spammed 1500+ other album reviews? :P
I also thought the name was quite ironic! Nothing like irony to give me a chuckle!
Also quite ironic since I see where Yusuf Mehdi is the “Corporate VP MSN Information Services and Merchant Platform Division at Microsoft….leading Microsoft’s efforts for online advertising…”(out of context one can build a real case : )
Some advertising!!
;-) Well, it’ll be interesting checking back at Amazon to see if any good comes from all this. As for the “Divinely Guided One”… he’s got a date with Karma and I don’t think he’s going to like her!
Looks like Mehdi is just a bunch of grade B middle eastern studio cats. Maybe I’m wrong but no touring info, interviews, biography or fan club? No photos of our man Mehdi?