Deezed

2y

2024 and still posters that cope about pure sales

streaming sales are objectively the best data to evaluate an artists true performance

never in the music industry has there been a metric that can 100% actively track true consumer demand, until streaming

a consumer making the active decision to choose a specific artists song over the 10,000 other artists that are being promoted is a massive decision, and we see that in live time on-mass on a daily, weekly, monthly data

lets say in the pure sales era, a consumer goes and buys 5 different cd's from 5 different artists. how can you effectively track which artist ended up grabbing that consumers attention more causing them to run that CD more aka longevity vs hype

but in terms of sales data, that consumer contributed 1 sale to each artist equally, without the ability to track that maybe they listened to Artist #3 75% of the time throughout that year and Artist #5 got half a spin and Cd collected dust rest of the year

BRAVE

2y

There is no new life sparking all of the rap game. That’s what people mean when they say rap is currently “dead”. Are you right in rap having an abundance of newer stars in 2016-2019? Yes. Is rap still uber successful and dominating the top of the charts? Not on the Hot 100 for a while but otherwise, yes. Your argument is 100% factual…on paper.

You gotta step back and look at the big picture: there is something going on in the culture where things are shifting, new meta is being created at every corner of not just music - but in film/tv, gaming, dance, skating etc. There is something going on in pop with Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter. There is something going on in country with Shaboozey, Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan. But what about hiphop?

Hiphop is nowhere to be seen in the greater cultural shift in pathology that’s been occurring since COVID. Where is hiphop’s Olivia Rodrigo? Where’s hiphop’s Billie Eilish? Look at all the names you’ve listed as examples of hiphop’s current dominance; all from the 2010s in fame. Everyone else is present in the greater cultural shift except for hiphop. This is beyond Billboard 200 and first week sales amongst a crop of veterans.

People aren’t saying it outright in those words but most people can recognize there is a great shift and thus hiphop being largely absent from it is glaring. It can be felt, and the great crop of new stars being so recent, just to fizzle out, makes it even more apparent.

Hiphop has not produced a single agreed upon new superstar rapper this decade. Kill me now.

There is also no one who seems to possess the combination of poetic rap skill, wide commercial appeal and forward thinking style born from Gen Z. There is no upheld standard of quality writing at the moment. That is bad.

If it keeps up at this pace, expect to see nothing but geezers being talked about in rap for the foreseeable future. That is bad. God step in. Spirit of J Dilla and James Brown step in. But I’m out for now, you think about that one bucko.

SWAN

2y

who tf is Benson Boone

Midzy

2y

You said clicking on a song is a massive decision?

Deezed

2y

2024 and still posters that cope about pure sales

streaming sales are objectively the best data to evaluate an artists true performance

never in the music industry has there been a metric that can 100% actively track true consumer demand, until streaming

a consumer making the active decision to choose a specific artists song over the 10,000 other artists that are being promoted is a massive decision, and we see that in live time on-mass on a daily, weekly, monthly data

lets say in the pure sales era, a consumer goes and buys 5 different cd's from 5 different artists. how can you effectively track which artist ended up grabbing that consumers attention more causing them to run that CD more aka longevity vs hype

but in terms of sales data, that consumer contributed 1 sale to each artist equally, without the ability to track that maybe they listened to Artist #3 75% of the time throughout that year and Artist #5 got half a spin and Cd collected dust rest of the year

Deezed

2y

yes it is. the same exact way in the 2000's, if we had cameras in a consumers car and could track which CD they played most while driving, as the CD they chose to play is indeed a massive decision

the difference is we can track that now, on-mass, daily.

tell me how, when i go in my car, and i scroll through my artists page on apple music, which has hundreds of artists, how is then clicking into one of those artists page, and choosing an album to spin on my way to work not a missive decision?

thats a decision that up until the streaming era, could never be tracked. a decision that labels used to pay money to have a***ytical departments try and attempt to graph through external factors such as continual merch sales, interview/live show ratings (SNL ratings when that specific artist appeared for example). All to try and track continual consumer demand which is now self-reported by streaming services for free.

Zero

2y

how the f*** is rihanna not the #1 pop star?

white supremacy really does override all logic huh

rihanna dominated pop, rap, rnb, edm. Shes listened to by all ages and all races, and she doesn't need a million bundles or tricks to chart high

she also does NOT have a toxic cult fanbase like beyonce and taylor so she deserves it for that reason alone

TheFader

2y

This is wrong on so many levels.

Streaming is the biggest fraud job in the history of the music industry.

Not only can it be so easily manipulated, botted, and faked, but what other industry do you know of where products get tracked and paid out per use?

Do film studios get more money every time someone plays a DVD? Do book companies get paid every time someone re-reads a book? Do video game creators get more revenue every time someone boots up the game?

It’s a ridiculous and stupid business model and all it’s done is dilute the value of music.

You can’t even argue that the artists are benefitting from it either because they get, quite literally, less than pennies in this system

Zero

2y

how the f*** is rihanna not the #1 pop star?

white supremacy really does override all logic huh

rihanna dominated pop, rap, rnb, edm. Shes listened to by all ages and all races, and she doesn't need a million bundles or tricks to chart high

she also does NOT have a toxic cult fanbase like beyonce and taylor so she deserves it for that reason alone

Deezed

2y

pure sale cope.

is there not streaming services for books?

is there not streaming services for TV shows and movies?

is there not streaming services for sports events?

what are you talking about? most industries would LOVE to have the ability to move their products or services to revenue generators that are directly tied to on-demand consumer use because it allows for their marketing teams to make near 100% accurate assessments for the future of the product/service based on live data indicating consumer demand.

for example, since you want to mention film studios. Film studios get paid at-cost, or slightly higher than cost, for their movie rights to be put onto a streaming service

said streaming service has an a***ytics team that monitors that film studios streaming numbers for their movies that are now on their platform. Those streaming numbers end up doing well and the platform sees consistent consumer demand and retention rates for that studios movies, especially when compared to their competitors, guess what?

The streaming platform lets the studio know that now they have a pending bid in for their next production 20% above cost this time. This allows the studio to not worry about going to box office and having a bad headline like "X finished its premiere week generating $13 million in ticket sale revenue, but the film budget was $55 million", and now they guarantee profit all because of streaming data indicating consumer demand in live time. the benefits of streaming even when its not "pay per use" like the music industry is.

now back to MUSIC industry, at the end of the day whats the point of coping about pure sales? streaming was invented to stop artists from literally gaining $0 when millions of people just illegally downloaded their album which is what we saw happening in the early 2010's when pure sales were down to their lowest point until paid streaming services became a thing and we literally saw a resurgence in the music industry

btw this chart is not inflation adjusted and shows just how bad the music industry was in 2013/2014. They were earning the same exact $-value revenue as they were in 1989. absolutely brutal.

so yes i can argue there is a direct benefit for artists with streaming, that benefit is them having a job. them being signed. labels taking risks on new artists with revenue projections up now. labels being fed more A/R money for talent acquisition's. thanks to streaming revitalizing an industry that was almost deemed dead in the early 2010's.

jack johnson

2y

because a large amount of hits is literally all she has

Deezed

2y

yes it is. the same exact way in the 2000's, if we had cameras in a consumers car and could track which CD they played most while driving, as the CD they chose to play is indeed a massive decision

the difference is we can track that now, on-mass, daily.

tell me how, when i go in my car, and i scroll through my artists page on apple music, which has hundreds of artists, how is then clicking into one of those artists page, and choosing an album to spin on my way to work not a missive decision?

thats a decision that up until the streaming era, could never be tracked. a decision that labels used to pay money to have a***ytical departments try and attempt to graph through external factors such as continual merch sales, interview/live show ratings (SNL ratings when that specific artist appeared for example). All to try and track continual consumer demand which is now self-reported by streaming services for free.

TheFader

2y

is there not streaming services for books?
is there not streaming services for TV shows and movies?

Yes, there are, but creators don’t get paid every time someone watches a movie on Netflix or reads a comic book on Marvel Unlimited

Music industry is the only s*** where a repeat view/playthrough is counted as additional “sales”, the s*** makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and nobody is winning because even the labels are struggling to make money right now.

It’s one thing to track how many times music is being played, I’m all for that, but converting that into sales numbers is stupid as f*** and nobody is benefitting from it whatsoever.

Pure sales will always be better.

yungking

2y

Clicking on an artist page and playing their music is not equal to buying an album outright with your own dollars

If you stream a trash album then you can just not listen to it again but if you BUY a trash album then you’ll be pissed that you wasted money on it

Deezed

2y

ill give you a perfect example of how cope pure sales are

lets go back in time to when the music industry was in shambles. early 2010's. only pure sales.

rap was non-existence on the hot 100, it did well on bb200, but hot 100 was dominated by itunes purchases and radio.

anyone old enough to remember would know that there was an infinite amount of hit rap songs during this period, yet if we go and check their performance on the hot 100 i bet almost all of them did not even crack the top 10. why? because pure sales is cope

Lets take a look at some of the most notable rap hits in the early 2010's:

Hot Nigga - peaked #6
The Motto - peaked #14
Lifestyle - peaked #16
Bugatti - peaked #33
U.O.E.N.O - peaked #20
F***ing Problems - peaked #8
No Lie - peaked #24

rap was plagued with illegal downloads, singles would never chart cus no one was buying rap singles on itunes, u just download that s***, this was common. rap albums? s*** jayz magna carta and drakes NWTS literally went DIAMOND on that torrent site back in the day. 10+ MILLION DOWNLOADS. thats real consumer demand, that was never accurately inputted into any billboard chart during that era. imagine not being able to accurately report MILLIONS of sale.

what did streaming change? the immediate catapult for rap onto the hot 100 as that entire missing section of consumer demand slowly began pouring into chartable metrics, and we saw the rise of rap from 2016 onwards. finally being able to show real consumer demand on a shifting daily and weekly basis

and this is when rap literally dominated the charts up until around 2021, which we now see the shifting consumer demand move from rap and flow into other genres like pop and country. this is evident in streaming figures. something we can now track becuase of streaming.

TheFader

2y

s*** jayz magna carta and drakes NWTS literally went DIAMOND on that torrent site back in the day. 10+ MILLION DOWNLOADS. thats real consumer demand, that was never accurately inputted into any billboard chart during that era. imagine not being able to accurately report MILLIONS of sale.

This is where you are confused, it’s not a sale if it’s an illegal download

If I go watch a camrip of Gladiator II right now because I don’t wanna buy a movie ticket, they not counting my view towards the film’s box office.

These charts are to report SALES.

I’m all for the tracking of listener data and engagement, I think it’s valuable as well.

But that s*** should not be converted into sales figures, because they are not sales.

Any up-and-coming artist would 1000% prefer a pure sale over a stream because a sale directly puts money into their pocket and gives them the financial freedom to continue creating their art. The only people truly benefitting from streaming at this point are the top of the top artists.

Deezed

2y

exactly, which is what streaming solved in the music industry.

just caused you watched gladiator illegally on fmovies doesnt mean that still shouldnt be charted into consumer demand. it just means your demand will go uncharted, unnoticed, never represented as theres no way to check those numbers

this was the main issue during pure sales era. pop didnt have to deal with illegal downloads as much so they dominated, rap was plagued with it so rap was suppressed on the charts.

2016+ came, streaming absorbed all the consumers who illegally downloaded, and boom, and entire genre shift on the hot 100 happened.

what changed? nothing. in real life you would have known rap was the biggest genre, but it was simply suppressed until streaming allowed for true consumer demand to be shown. the same way were now seeing rap streams falling and pop/country gaining, real demand will flow, and we get to see it live. thats the beauty of streaming. theres no excuses in streaming, its pure consumer data and trends updated daily

edit: i agree, the streaming model is not the best yet but it is the most accurate in terms of reporting data, and in the future and i think as its adopted more, artists will receive more revenue as the older generations are replaced with newer generations. think what happens when baby boomers go who typically arent streaming, and the 5 year olds now are around 20, will be alot more users streaming, a lot more revenue

TheFader

2y

Consumer demand also includes those willing to spend real, hard earned money on a physical copy of an album. I don’t understand why you’re acting like those sales mean absolutely nothing, especially when streaming is the most passive form of support you can give an artist. It literally takes zero effort to stream something, and the casual listener isn’t even seeking the music out themselves, they’re getting it force-fed to them via heavily curated playlists