Do artists owe their fans new music?
Popular artists such as Frank Ocean, SZA and Rihanna have now all gone a half-decade without releasing a new album, much to the dismay of their fans. But do fans have a right to feel aggrieved if their favourite artist goes AWOL from the music scene? Or is it a case of gross entitlement?
The way in which fans support artists has changed significantly in recent years. Streaming services accounted for 83% of music consumption in the UK last year, meaning that only a small percentage of listeners actually still purchase a standard £9.99 album. An artist gets a big chunk of that payment in comparison to streaming platforms, where a service like Spotify pays out just £0.0028 per stream, split between artist and label. Consumers generally pay a set monthly fee for a streaming service which likely doesn’t hinge on whether a specific artist has a new release, so many of these restless fans are not directly paying the artist as they would have been doing say twenty years ago.
This is completely fine and makes financial sense, but the wallets of most SZA fans, for example, will be unaffected regardless of if she releases her long-awaited follow-up to Ctrl or not.
Even if a fan does purchase an album, then (looking at it bluntly) it’s a mutually beneficial transaction, the fan is hardly doing the musician a favour.
Grammy-winning singer Frank Ocean released his debut album, Channel Orange, in 2012 before keeping fans waiting four more years for his next studio album, titled Blonde.
Ocean has not released an album in the following six years and an example of his fans’ frustration at his absence can be found when, amid unsubstantiated rumours he would be the surprise guest at Camp Flog Gnaw 2019, they booed actual surprise guest Drake off stage.
Ocean’s 18-year-old brother was killed in a car crash in 2020 and he has not appeared on any official song since then. It is important to remember that artists are people and not just robots programmed to churn out content, so we should try and understand that they may encounter personal issues which could impact their desire to create.
After signing with Def Jam Recordings in 2005, Bajan superstar Rihanna put out seven albums over the next eight years but 2016’s Anti is her only release in the last decade. Shortly before the release of her penultimate album Apologetic, she cancelled a planned ten-week trip to the UK amid reports of ‘exhaustion’. It was no wonder given her unforgiving work schedule over the previous decade.
She has since moved away from the music scene and into the world of fashion and beauty and is currently pregnant with her first child. She regularly brushes off followers who demand new music in her comment sections and seems more than content during her hiatus from the music industry.
Frank Ocean’s Blonde managed to live up to its near impossibly high expectations, but artists must also feel apprehensive about how long-awaited projects will be received.
After two classic albums, rapper Dr. Dre’s proposed third album, Detox, reached mythical status before it even came out and it became one of the most hyped albums of all time. However, it was never actually released, with Dre scrapping the project after thinking it did not live up to the standards expected of it.
A lot of the fans begging for music are just joking around, but reading thousands of comments demanding an album every time you post on Instagram must still be draining for a musician and maybe even cause them to lose their love for the art. ‘Stan culture’ has created armies of loyal followers who bay for any content from their favourite celebrity but it may be worth taking a step back and considering if your comment demanding a new album from Rihanna comes across as entitled.
