In the age of oversharing and way too much information being easily and readily available, it’s easy to feel like you have all the facts and that you know everything. Why I am seeing controversy over Omar Apollo and his new tour, and it’s people live tracking his new tour sales in real-time?
In the age of the Twitter Wars, it’s easy to clock when a fan has nothing to truly bring to a conversation, often trying to elevate their favorite artist by bringing up numbers that have to do with their perceived success, such as sales as proof.
But, whatever happened to just enjoying the music? Letting a first listen dictate whether or not you want to tune into an artist. Why is it that a million-dollar sales benchmark shows somebody that an album is worth listening to, and not the five-star rating?
Some fans take it upon themselves to be the artist promoter they view that they do not have, whether it’s taking part to inflate sales and streams or feeling a sense of accomplishment or entitlement for creating achievements for their favorite artist.
In the age of numbers and fandoms turning into artist development boot camp participants, it’s hard not to feel disappointed in where music fandom is going. It feels like no one is truly enjoying the music anymore.
The social media-fueled need for validation through high chart placements changes the relationship between fans and music, sometimes overshadowing the experience of simply enjoying the sound (Hesmondalgh, 2021)1. Songs that are sure to hit commercially are prioritized, and as a result, it feels like a slowdown of the music culture can be a detrimental result.
so where did this obsession with streaming come from? the rise of streaming and social media
The earliest memory that I have of pop music and statistics was watching ‘Best Song Ever’ break the Vevo record for the most viewed music video premiere on the platform, surpassing the previously held record by Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball. I very clearly remember being fascinated at the view ticker constantly rising as the video first dropped, eager to see the results once the 24-hour limit hit.
One Direction’s ‘Best Song Ever’ Breaks One-Day Vevo Record
Vevo and music video recording used to be something serious, and many artists used the 24-hour premiere view count to measure a song and an artist’s success. Many companies used this data in their marketing analytical information, using it to inform how to shape the rest of a musician’s era.
As the Vevo 24-hour view stat gained popularity in the pop culture world and stan communities, other companies sought to create systems that tracked an artist’s success. I couldn’t find the exact date, but according to my deep dives into the Spotify forum posts, it looks like Spotify began to showcase song stream counts on an artist’s top 5 most played songs in the year 2012, the year before One Direction’s music video offering broke the internet. 2021 is when it looks like Spotify began to show stream numbers for every song in a catalog publicly. In 2015, Spotify also dropped the monthly listeners feature rolled out.
Platforms such as HITSDAILYDOUBLE and Chart Data started hitting the social media mainstream as well in the last decade, showcasing the full range of an artist’s statistical power. With the heightened visibility of chart and performance check-in, along with project performance projections and predictions, it only made sense that the statistical marker of an artist’s performance started to make its way into conversations about an artist and their impact in fan communities.
UPDATE: A SWEET TOP 20: REPUBLIC CORPS will take the Top 5 this week as Island’s Sabrina Carpenter repeats at #1 with Short n’ Sweet. Meanwhile, LE SSERAFIM‘s CRAZY EP is poised to open in the Top 10.
It got to the point where every artist began to have their own fan-run dedicated stats account, which recorded and shared every statistical point of an artist’s journey, often informing audiences on the success and popularity of an artist’s most recently released project.
In today’s music reporting climate, it seems like sales and performance stats have now become more widely accepted indicators of quality. By this, an album’s performance in sales and streams is looked at as the most genuine marker for what makes a good project. Casual fans of artists can often be driven by these stats, seeing low-performance rates as a sign not to even take a chance on an album.
Ice Spice’s Tragic “Y2K” First Week Sales Projections Leave Fans Stunned
This can often be skewed, however. Many fans have taken it upon themselves in recent eras of standom to initiate their fave artist’s success with things like mass streaming.
For fans of artists like K-POP, in addition to mass streaming, physical sales are of mass importance and mass preordering is also part of the job of being a top fan.
Products like Stationhead – a platform where users can create live radio stations and invite listeners to formulate organized streaming events – have taken large popularity in fandom culture, with even artists themselves taking part!
Other actions can be taken to guarantee the mass success of a musical project, such as fundraising for extra streams and supplementary physical album purchasing.
what does this shift in fan culture mean? Now being a fan of an artist no longer means just enjoying their music or even their personality, it now means that you are pushed to invest heavily in an artist’s career future.
the changing dynamic of a fan.. so now you’re a stakeholder?
In much of the research on fandom culture and the parasocial relationship between fan and artist, there has been a noted greater impact that fans have on the performance of an artist. This term has been coined the new “fandom economy (Pearson 2010)”.
The closer the relationship between an artist and their fans, the more a direct correlation to a higher musical sales rate. Using social media, artists can directly interact with their fanbase, to generate more buzz than ever surrounding their new projects. The direct correlation between fandom love and organized streaming events to future chart success creates a new definition of what means to be a fan (Jia 2021)2.
“The digital revolution has had a profound impact upon fandom, empowering and disempowering, blurring the lines between producers and consumers, creating symbiotic relationships between powerful corporations and individual fans, and giving rise to new forms of cultural production”.3
Pearson, 2010
The role of the audience has seen a significant change in the age of the digital revolution. Audiences that were initially regarded as just a market, and a means of commerce, are now seen as consumers or producers, and as they have such a large impact on an artist’s performance, can often even influence what the artist puts out.
This changing “fandom economy” has created the feeling of prosumption (Jia 2021). Prosumption is the intertwined force of consumption and production. In many cases, the word prosumption is used when it is difficult to even separate the two concepts. Fans are now in charge of directly producing and influencing an artist’s musical trajectory, while also taking part in mass consumption.
Many businesses can be seen to cater to the fans first, even before company stakeholders. Fans themselves have the power to interact with their favorite artists, without labels even having to facilitate or set up the interaction. This is where the audience is seen as the new-age stakeholders. With this increasing access to details such as real-time streams and sales, these fans can find themselves invested in the exact success of their favorite artists, with the success marked as something similar to a return on their investment.
This can mirror the same sentiments that an original stakeholder has, looking into their company’s stock prices, as well as the performance of the business, and deciding if it is worth it to continue investing. In the case of actual stakeholders, however, there is a true return on investment, as the success of a business means money in their pockets. But with this “data-only theory” that incites fans to complete emotional labor in the form of streaming (Wan, 2024)4, this seemingly two-way relationship is nothing short of parasocial and only illusionary.
what can this all mean for the future of music?
Numbers in the streaming world have begun to lose their meaning. Once a true marker for gauging an artist’s true impact on the scene, they now have become misleading. Many artists of today, especially in the age of TikTok can have a massive hit, boasting millions of streams, and still have a relatively lackluster presence in the cultural zeitgeist. On the other hand, an artist with a dedicated fanbase can also bring out monstrous streaming rates, and fare the same impact result.
Examples of this can be seen with artists like Tommy Richman and Taylor Swift.
The first thought that comes to your mind when I say this, is who the actual heck is Tommy Richman? When doing research for this one, I honestly had no idea who he was either and the common standard Twitter words of “industry plant” were found leaving my mouth. I have since heard ‘Devil is a Lie’ and I have to say I like the song and his style. So call me influenced. Tommy Richman is my friend; I never said anything bad about him.
Tommy Richman has found immense success in the past year with TikTok hit singles such as ‘Million Dollar Baby’ and the aforementioned ‘Devil is a Lie’. His monthly listener rate and stream counts for the two songs boast EXTREME SUCCESS, and you would think the artists would be everywhere right now.
But I had no idea who he was, and I bet you didn’t either. So how could this be?
Taylor Swift, on the other hand, is an artist known and is regarded as one of the most successful pop artists of our time. With every new album release, let it be a new original piece of work or a new installment of her Taylor’s Version series, she boasts larger-than-life success in terms of stats like sales and streams.
However, with her last album specifically, The Tortured Poets Department, although it was surely a commercial success, it felt like this album offer came and went. When thinking about the pop artists who dropped albums this year that created impactful moments, rarely would you hear anything about this album.
Billie Eilish found renewed success in her new HIT ME HARD AND SOFT album offering, with singles ‘Lunch’ and ‘Birds of a Feather’ finding their way into everybody’s heads. Beyonce proved that nobody is stopping her with the Cowboy Carter album, and surely letting everyone know that this “Is not a country album. This is a BEYONCE album”.
Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter proved that steady wins the race with their new projects BRAT and short and sweet. Both artists catapulted into fame after years in the industry with fun and catchy singles that are sure to be remembered for years to come and will define the year 2024 when it comes to music.
Chappell Roan and South African artist Tyla both made newcomer waves with their debut studio albums The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess and TYLA, with both albums and artists paving new paths for their underrepresented groups and diversifying pop music for the better like we have been begging for years.
But where is Taylor in all this? Just recently, one of the main singles from this album won the song of the summer. But I know I’ve never heard it. Have you?
With artists having inflated rates of success, without making a significant impact, it creates this phenomenon that we are seeing of an apparent absence of pop stars in the culture. Why does it feel like we used to be almost spoiled with the choice of which top artist to listen to, with each artist having their own identity and own prominent standing to be remembered by a majority of the people and for years to come? Where is that nowadays?
Why Aren’t More Pop Stars Being Born?
Pop Stars Aren’t Popping Like They Used To – Do Labels Have a Plan?
These inflated rates of success and no real fanbase do not seem to phase record companies. Now, the TikTok hit is what these companies are looking for, as it creates a larger revenue stream with less effort, and the money spent on an artist’ development is no longer needed, which is where this missing popstar business came from.
Even established artists feel the effects of this new push. Some artists feel pressured to stay in this pop bubble, or into a style of music to keep the TikTok hype afloat. These artists feel pigeonholed into a formula that would guarantee them a surefire hit but can come across as devoid of authenticity (Hesmondalgh, 2021).
Some examples we saw of this come in the forms of Katy Perry’s ongoing DISATOUROUS album rollout and Doja Cat’s not-so-recent but still controversial “rollout” of her new album, era, and persona. Doja felt like with the TikTok success of Say So, she was trapped in a pop bubble and therefore felt forced to put out less than stellar “Cash grab” albums. I thought those albums were incredible, but I guess I’m one of those dumb fans sooo.
Doja Cat Admits Her Last Two “Mediocre Pop” Albums Were Cash-Grabs: “And Yall Fell For It”
With Katy Perry and her “grand return” to pop music, nothing sounds organic. Or good! Amongst the controversy surrounding her lead single ‘Woman’s World’ and her outrageous choice to continue to work with disgraced producer Dr. Luke, there have been some others to point out that this song was way too formulaic and tried to create that anthemic feminist hit that Katy had become synonymous within her 2013-2015 years.
But with this new song, and it looks like with this whole era, Perry is playing it wayyy too safe at trying to make formulaic hits.. except it’s no longer 2014. We do not want it. It is okay.
Did Katy Perry Release the Worst Comeback Song of All Time?
Companies cutting costs in the development sector means there is no room for growth or second chances. Numbers have become the instant marker of an artist’s success, and there is no thought as to whether an artist with a humble beginning could find their footing and their audience as time goes on.
Let’s go back to Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX for a moment. With their two new eras, they have successfully reignited their fame and realigned themselves as high-performing pop girlies. But they didn’t come out of nowhere. Charli has been in the scene for YEARSSS, starting high, but relying on mostly her dedicated fanbase to stay afloat until this moment.
Having a fanbase is important, and one that companies need to take note of. As an artist with this fan space, she was able to garner enough success for labels to keep her around and it just so happened that with this album she struck gold.
The same happened with Sabrina. As a Disney kid, she was almost guaranteed a dedicated fanbase to surround her, with some of her longest-running fans being around since the Girl Meets World days. She was able to keep herself afloat while growing up and even faced label changes until she arguably found her footing with the album The Emails I Can’t Send, priming her for a new level of success with ‘Espresso’ and short and sweet.
But what about the artists that don’t have strong backing? It is so easy for a label to see an artist who isn’t generating the necessary buzz or enough money and decide to drop them pretty quickly. Even the artist with one of the greatest rises this year, Chappell Roan, found herself dropped from her first label Atlantic Records as she couldn’t generate enough success for the stakeholders. Although, I think the dropping was for the best in Roan’s story and how it inspired her to create a new approach, the label could have been attached to a money spout if they had taken the chance on her for a bit longer.
Allowing artists to have time is crucial in creating quality artists that we are all itching to see a return. The development of artists and trusting in the process is a lost art that is due to the “data-first” society of the music industry, and we kind of need it back, please.
“like Olivia didn’t blow up overnight she was a disney kid?? s– takes time.”
Billboard
conclusions
So yes, this whole thing came about from me being annoyed at the state of how fandoms operate with a stakeholder and data-first mindset. What annoyed me enough to do a deep dive into this is how sales and streams have become the new album review, and how fans won’t allow you to criticize a piece of work, simply because it has sold well.
But looking into this matter, it looks like the focus on numbers doesn’t fall only on fans, and can create issues within the industry as well. The quality of music is on the brink of collapse with only a focus on numbers, and relying on fandom mass streaming, with quality falling through the cracks.
We almost saw the cracks create an entire collapse a couple of years ago when the formulaic TikTok hits had hit their peak, and the only new music offerings we were getting were overly sampled, overly gimmicky anthemic songs that had no substance to them, such as ABCDEFU or I’m Mad at Disney, or even the horrendous Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bitch.
I shudder thinking about that era of music, and I’m glad we are moving back into fun yet impactful pop again. We are so back in terms of the music, but we still have some work to do in the department of appreciating work for what is provided musically rather than statistically.
AS FOR ME, I enjoy music, regardless of its chart position or how long it has been on Billboard Top 200, and that’s why I use Apple Music 😉
Sources:
- Hesmondhalgh, David. (2021). Streaming’s Effects on Music Culture: Old Anxieties and New Simplifications. Cultural Sociology. 16. 174997552110199. 10.1177/17499755211019974. ↩︎
- Jia, B., Li, J., & Ma, J. (2021, December). Transformation of fan culture under the influence of social media. In 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021) (pp. 2173-2178). Atlantis Press. ↩︎
- Pearson, R. (2010). Fandom in the Digital Era. Popular Communication, 8(1), 84–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405700903502346 ↩︎
- Wan, H. (2024). Fan Culture: Emotional Construction, Fan Economy and Data War: Take the Talent Show “Youth With You 3” as an Example. International Journal of Social Sciences and Public Administration, 3(1), 21-24. https://doi.org/10.62051/ijsspa.v3n1.04 ↩︎
Digital Media Association. (2023). Streaming forward: 2023 fan engagement report. https://dima.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DiMA-Streaming-Forward-2023-Fan-Engagement-Report.pdf
