Philly indie punkers Cheap 52 love to hate (and hate to love) social media

Cheap 52 is playing a sold-out headlining hometown show Friday at Ruba Club with Philly bands Friend and Disaster Artist, as well as Boston’s Makeout Palace.

Buster Malino fronts Cheap 52 on guitar and vocals, with Steve Valentino on drums and Lily Congdon on bass. The project began in 2017 when Malino was in high school in West Chester County, New York. Cheap 52 released their self-titled EP that same year, and a few singles thereafter.

The band went to the wayside during Malino’s time at Drexel University, and the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t do the band any favors, either. But in 2022 as the world returned to (somewhat) normalcy, Cheap 52 got going again.

“My buddy Max Mega helped me get back into it,” Malino told WXPN. Mega got him hooked up with Valentino and the band’s first bassist, who Congdon replaced.

Cheap 52 dropped their first full album Vermont in 2024 and that’s when the social media strategy came into play.

“I don’t enjoy making social media content,” Malino said. “It makes me feel insane.”

He and his friend Sam Poll developed a social media plan to spread Cheap 52’s midwest emo-tinged power pop-punk rock to more people. The results, despite Malino’s apprehension, are clear.

Vermont‘s lead single, “Wish in Twos,” has more than 527,000 streams on Spotify. The album’s second track, “My Fault,” which was not pushed as hard on socials as “Wish,” is topping 165,000 listens, as well.

Cheap 52’s most popular reels on Instagram have millions of views combined, too, largely featuring the catchy lead riff from “Wish” or the band being cheeky in some way, like getting scolded by the neighbor of a basement venue, or sneaking in a Benson Boone melody for the bit.

Cheap 52 was posting five Instagram reels a week, then two to three weekly for a while. That all led the band’s Instagram account jumping from about 1,000 followers to nearly 29,000 now.

“There’s no way to be organic in this sort of market,” Malino, who studied music production at Drexel, said. “It’s an awful way for any market or industry to work. All this shit is kind of a race to the bottom for our attention spans, the way we consume music in these deformed little clips.”

While the social media strategy has led to beaucoup numbers online, Malino said that creates an eerie and uneasy separation from the band’s music.

“You get in a loop with it and its all about the numbers,” he said. “Everything you made becomes a number. How many are listening, how many followers? I was never the type to really care about that, but once you start to care and you see the numbers change, you feel it in a nasty way. To commodify your art can feel really bad.”

Another factor of “virality” is the ephemeral nature of social media attention.

“Social media is great at making fair-weather fans,” he said. “They see a thing and follow you and that may be the last time they see your stuff again.”

It’s really all about putting in the work during live shows for Cheap 52.

“I think if you’re just [posting to social media] and expecting people to come out to show, you’re not going to have that happen,” he said. “You have to throw a good show and have people enjoy it.”

For better or for worse, Cheap 52 has seen an increase in crowd sizes at their gigs since the social media push, which Malino is taking a break from to spare his mental health and embark on a nine-show tour with Makeout Palace.

“I’m grateful for people listening and following, but there’s always a drive to get to a better place where you don’t have to really try super hard to get 50 people out to a gig,” he said.

Malino said being in the position Cheap 52 is in now is difficult, and made the argument that artists with massive followings, such as Sabrina Carpenter, and an artist who has very few fans and listeners share a similar sense of freedom.

“They’re not the ones paying attention to the numbers,” he said: it’s up-and-coming acts that have to work diligently to draw in new fans, with social media being an integral component in building an audience. “The goal for a lot of artists now is to get to the point where they aren’t the ones thinking about that. People just want to be back at that point where they can focus on music again.”

He went on to paraphrase breakout indie folk singer-songwriter Hudson Freeman, saying a music career is based on the ability to sustain yourself at a loss until it’s profitable.

But what’s most rewarding to Malino and the band is seeing fans at shows and hearing from fans from across the world. Despite the abhorrence of social media, the band has connected with people in Ireland, Morocco, France, and more thanks to their online presence.

“I had kids send me a video of them playing the [“Wish in Twos] riff or asking to show them how to play it,” he said. “That’s more rewarding than the followers or the number of listeners.”