Let me explain what the ship band is, for anyone who doesn't know.

It was started by a guy who knows his Google, and put work into getting a Google monopoly on "ceilidh band" anywhere in the country. So if you Google "ceilidh band Bristol" "The Ship Band, Bristol" come up as the top hit. If you Google "ceilidh band Manchester", "the Ship Band, Manchester" comes up as the top hit.

There is a video on their website that shows a good band, and they market themselves as The Top Ceilidh Band in the Country.

They they get bookings around the country, and create a band out of local musicians to do the gig. Sometimes an area will have a fixed "Ship Band", which explains why the band that someone has seen was the same band every time. Sometimes it will be a shifting band selected out of a pool of musicians. Meanwhile, the founder takes a cut on every gig, and lives luxuriously off the proceeds without doing anything.

Sometimes the band will be good. Sometimes they are terrible. It depends on who they get.

How fraudulent is this? I certainly don't like it. They are monopolising the web, preventing any other ceilidh band getting gigs, and thus slowly strangling the ceilidh band scene. Their founder is acting as a classic capitalist - living off unearned income based on exploiting a web monopoly. Their bands aren't always bad, but they sometimes are. And either way, they aren't the band in the video on the website. There is a difference between using the odd dep, and being a totally different product. Most bands need to put effort into creating something good as they get gigs on the basis of having a good reputation. The ship band don't. They get them on the basis of their dodgy advertising.

To be fair, it's not hugely different from what many big companies do. They monopolise the market through aggressive, rather dishonest marketing and drive everyone else out of business. They have some capitalist at the top who lives richly while doing nothing. The thing is that in the music scene, people generally treat each other a bit better than that.