My Dear Melancholy, is pretty much his last project that met expectations in terms of U.S. numbers

curveball choice but MIKE is shaping up to have a great 2025. his momentum has been unbelievable since disco!. he just passed 2M monthly listeners btw

he’s been putting in the work. not saying he’ll jump 5 tiers of popularity, but if he stays on the trajectory he’s been on, his presence will become harder to ignore

young, versatile, accessible. i think he could catch some viral ones next year honestly. one of my favs

tv off’s window has closed, luther might have a shot in january once the christmas songs cool off

How did After Hours not meet expectations?

The Weeknd has NEVER done a crazy amount in streaming units first week, his entire career

you're right. my dear melancholy had 141m streams in its debut week, an average of 23.5m streams per song. after hours got 220m first week, an average of 15.7m streams per song.

despite blinding lights being such a massive success, it seems like most people prefer dark, trilogy esque weeknd songs and the more he leans into pop, the less interest there is.

The defendants were smoking d*** on page 3346 of the KTT2 music sxn sales thread your honor

most units moved in one year ever

@fader

Keep in mind, he achieved that many streams in the U.S. with just six songs and little promotion

Everyone expected his next album (AH) to do 300–400 million streams in its first week, but that didn’t happen

gnx is receiving 10m more plays on day 12 than FATD (33m vs 23m)

GNX already out streamed her loss’s second week streams (173M) in just 5 days with 2 days left of Spotify tracking

tbh this is just telling me how strong drake’s apple numbers must be

hard to remember the last time i've seen a rap album this stable. reminds me of how SOUR performed, even the deep cuts were US spotify mainstays for months.

whole country was screaming metro in 2018 man come on

this was the case with taylor too until only like 2 years ago btw

if taylor can get out of that, weeknd should be able to too

After Hours (14 tracks) = 169k SEA
Lover (2019) (18 tracks) = 197k SEA

she was even doing =very similar numbers to weeknd

Weeknd's fw numbers are "low" because to get high fw numbers you need to become a big celebrity, which the weeknd is not

The Idol was a mistake
he rarely dates celebs since 2018 (this is huge)
rarely does collabs with big brands (also huge for young people)
rarely does things which get him in the news (like drake, taylor)

etc

Yes, The Weeknd isn't a big celebrity

You know what I mean lol. People don't talk about him as a celebrity outside of his music anywhere near as much as others

Sabrina is an example of what I'm talking about, she hasn't just come along w/ music and that's it. She's dating celebs, being in drama, collabing with huge brands, doing crazy s*** on tour which goes viral every week, causing headlines for things that aren't just music

S*** man I'd even say people talk about Future (non music) more than The Weeknd (non music) because of all the dumb memes he's associated with

Drake owes a LOT of his success to this too
So does Trav, it's not a coincidence that he blew up massively after dating kylie

Taylor Swift in the late 2010s was far less visible in the media than she is now & look what it's done to her career

I love how Taylor keeps stressing out this forum and it’s even better not that Kendrick flopped since so many people got invested in album sales when they thought he would pop

Now they looking silly and have to accept he got outsold casually by some bullshit

Wrong. He just doesn't have the juice like that when it comes to his consumption in the US. Drake is very famous but he doesn't move like a typical celeb.

When was the last time Drake dated anyone famous? Or even claimed anyone? He rarely attends award shows/other public events most celebs attend like the Met Gala. The most you'll see him do is attend a Raptors game and even those are very few and far between these days.

All he really does is drop his music and get out the way and it has massive motion.

With some things, you either have it or you don't. The Weeknd pulls massive numbers on Spotify but that's about it.

2023 bait

Yellow is an absolute classic but it being the 'most-streamed song released in the 2000s' is suspicious to me lmao

Drake did move like a typical celeb though, he has only become more private since CLB. And I actually think this is a reason his newer albums haven't done as well. Until Scorpion he was constantly dating high profile women and being talked about cause of it, and constantly had loads of huge memes about him. Some of the biggest internet memes of all time revolve around him. In 2017 I honestly think if you looked at how many people talk about every celeb in the US, Drake would have been top 5 with ease, even excluding music talk.

I really don't think it';s as coincidence that Taylor's popularity has blown up far more ever since she started doing all the celeb tricks like dating someone famous, showing up at big events etc.

Same with Sabrina, every woman I talk to is in love with her. And a lot of that is because of how she moves in the studio, but also because of how she moves outside of it. She has positioned herself as the new it girl. She constantly has viral moments happening, and all of that is just helping grow her fanbase more and more

The Weeknd meanwhile moves very quietly, it's only about the music in recent years, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think to hit those 300k SEA fw numbers you need to be in peoples minds way more than he is.

I swear every artist that does 200k+ SEA is someone that's talked about very regularly for non music stuff. Or they're Kendrick.