That Lorde thread by @boobdylan got me thinking

Does an artist’s success act as a a form of validation for the type of music that you listen to?

Edit: @2words ’ post clarifies what I’m talking about:

Nah lol this wasn’t nearly as much of a thing back then, you didn’t get artists begging fans to buy multiple copies or s*** like that. Internet stan culture has made the charts a bigger point of discussion than it used to be, it was always a part of it but not like it’s become with so many fans taking an active interest in it

Niggas with no money act like money isnt everything

Become? I've been here since 2013 and it's always been this way.

People are insecure about their music taste and need to have their opinions validated, so leaning on sales figures is a simple way of accomplishing that.

It’s literally one of the only tangible methods to measure music. It’s been a benchmark for success measurement by hip hop artists throughout history. It’s obviously not all the way indicative of what is good and what is not, but that’s probably why people find it interesting

People do take it too far when they act as if it’s the end of all means, but I think people are kidding themselves by saying it’s not a factor at all. There’s a medium somewhere

mainstream listeners need to validate their taste in boring factory made music so the objective scale of commercial success is a perfect place for that validation to be placed

Just depends on the artist I guess. Cause KTT loves that flop album WLR

It's been that way for years. I remember lurking an old KTT thread anticipating the fw sales of C4 and WTT and niggas being shook that C4 outsold WTT.

i never cared tbh, as long as the music sounds great and genuine i’m happy

well if an artist is a flop anything they drop afterward will carry the stink of failure and desperation and that would be hard to listen to

kidding btw

How else are we supposed to make graphs showing why our favorite artists are statistically the best?

This convo is just as stale as the threads theyre about

Good question. I made this thread a few months ago and ppl got mad and the mods moved it to misc

It's only gotten worse since then

Well the more annoying thing is that they find ways to s*** on artists they don't even care about/don't listen to for their chart performance

sales matter when it comes to budget for the next project

To be fair, though, music elitists and backpackers who despise 90% of popular artists are just as bad as the casuals and people obsessed with sales/charts.

Bring up charts and sales irl and they’ll hand you this

it's a game to them

Idk, I don’t think music fans were buying 20 copies of a single in order to ensure that the single was a #1 on the Hot 100

I think there’s always been interest in the topic but I feel like fans/artists/labels have become increasingly gung ho on getting chart success

I really don’t think anyone is using charts as a metric for what’s good or not. Chart watching is good for things like longevity and numbers, which IMO isn’t a bad thing as long as you’re actually taking in and critiquing the music. Sales have ALWAYS been apart of the music conversation I’m not really getting why it’s such a big deal nowadays.

The 13 year olds must be stopped

And yet it was interesting enough for you to post itt. Surely you must have an opinion on the matter

Yeah bc now stans can gang up and spam streams to get their fav to chart higher

E.g. those rabid Nicki Minaj stans

chartwatching as a means to s*** on other artists is so dumb lmao

higgsy a boring troll so idrc but that tyler vs rocky thread was so stupid

You’re right, they were buying the album 20 times because of that one song that was on it.