Anything to bring attention to his new album, “Nick Jonas”

Oct 6, 2014 20:11 GMT  ·  By

Nick Jonas has a new album and a new TV series coming out, so he’s busy trying to bring attention to both. After showing off his ripped body in Flaunt magazine, he’s taken to bribing his fans on Twitter, promising them follows if they buy copies of his new single, “Jealous.”

As they say, one hand washes the other.

Jonas is eager to move away from his Disney image and whatever perception people still hold true of him, dating from back in the day when he used to make the ladies scream as part of the Jonas Brothers group, which disbanded last year so they could all pursue solo careers.

He’s all beefed up now, after he overhauled his lifestyle following a Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis; the training is coming in handy for the moment as he started bulking up even more to play an MMA fighter on the DirecTV series “Kingdom.”

As for Nick’s new music, he’s turning to his 8.7 million strong fanbase for help, telling them that he will follow them if they use iTunes Gift 20 “or more people” to share his new single “Jealous.” “Confirm your iTunes gifting with a screenshot of this confirmation screen #sharejealousnickj,” he writes.

As you can see in the tweets below, he’s also advising his fans against cheating, saying he will personally look at each screenshot to verify they’re real and that the song has been “shared with the world.”

Right now, Nick Jonas is being blasted by celebrity pundits for his desperate gesture, with many saying he shouldn’t scoop so low if he still wants to retain a trace of credibility. That may very well be true, but the bottom line is that this has been done before, albeit not as obvious as Nick does it.

In an industry in which it’s very easy to become boxed and not be able to break out of said box, and in which competition is beyond fierce, artists (and especially pop stars) are forced to use whatever means available to them to get more exposure. One of that happens to be social media, so I’m not exactly sure we should be pointing a finger at Nick for doing it – not when other, bigger stars have also done it before.