Dear Artists: No One Cares If You Put Out New Music

In 2014 consumers of music don’t care if you put out new music. They don’t care at all. It’s not even that they don’t want to pay for it, they don’t care for it at all.

Chance The Rapper hasn’t put out a project in almost 2 years and other than a few grumblings for a new project here and there on twitter no one has been begging for a new one. Definitely nothing to the extent of Anonymous threatening Atlantic for a Lupe Fiasco release date (granted Chance doesn’t have a label).

With that being said Chance has toured since Acid Rap dropped, he opened for Mac Miller on a nationwide tour, he opened for Macklemore on a European tour, and then followed that up with a nationwide tour of his own. Then he followed that up with the summer festival run, and then he followed that up with a college tour in the fall.

You’d think at this point people would quit going to his shows maybe, but they just keep coming, and coming. 60,000 people showed up for his Lollapalooza set even though he had toured the entire country twice the year previous and hadn’t put out music in over a year.

Let me give you another example. Hoodie Allen recently released his debut album “People Keep Talking”. The album did 33,000 in its first week, which isn’t bad for someone who’s completely independent and acts as his own manager.

On the flip side of that, he’s going on tour to support the album, because that’s what you do. 25,000 people bought tickets to his tour the first day they were on sale.

THE FIRST DAY.

To make that number even more amazing the tickets went on sale almost a month before the album came out.

That means people are in a sense blindly buying tickets, obviously he has music he’s released previous, but they’re oblivious to his new music.

They don’t care if what he puts out is going to be good, and probably don’t care if the album came out at all. They know “No Interruption” and want to snapchat story it to their friends.

If Kendrick Lamar went on tour with B.O.B. two years from now with no new music released they would still sell out every show.

People know that they know “Swimming Pools” and that they know “Airplanes” and they want to get drunk and sing along to those two songs.

That’s awesome, it creates another avenue for the artist to earn money (since album sales are dwindling more and more every day), but it severely halts them making music, because they don’t have to.

For myself, personally, I would put consuming new music right there with going to a concert. When artists see that people are blindly buying tickets, they’re going to keep touring.

Chance The Rapper has said multiple times he was done touring for an extended period of time, but because people keep buying tickets he just keeps touring, it’s insane.

Those people, I don’t know who they are, but they exist. Those people are halting Chance, or whoever you favorite artist may be from making music.

So, this might sound weird, but quit buying concert tickets.