morgan wallen

I dont think it means the music is iredeemable or something, but I think you have to be kidding yourselves to think that him saying a slur didn't *inoculate* him with some fans as much as it repulsed others

i'm sorry but i've repeatedly agreed w/ that point in this thread including in the part you literally quoted but i.e.

for some people (i.e. myself) it might undermine the appeal of him as *a person*, but that's different to me than undermining his appeal as an artist. and of course i'm sure for some ppl it enhanced the appeal of him both as an artist and a person, but i don't really find it useful to speculate on for how many people that is true. and frankly for me as a listener, i don't really care. i can't care, if i'm going to listen to country music.

what i'm pushing back against is the monolithic presentation of his audience because it removes nuance from the conversation in several ways and makes for useless strawman-y back and forths. you actually were helping w/ this yesterday when you talked about the spectrum of motivations that could be feeding into his current fandom, but now you're doing the thing you do where you return to an argument a day after the fact in order to turn it into a nitpick-y spiral that makes everyone want to step in front of a train. i will not be participating in that much further

and again i think it's far more interesting to talk about the music, and why we may or may not be responding to it, bcuz it doesn't involve speculative theories (from either side of the argument) on the motivations of strangers. and again i'll note that was the substance of DJP's post from yesterday morning that re-sparked this conversation. guessing how many bad jelly beans are in the skyscraper sized jelly bean jar is pretty surface level stuff and i feel like we've sorta reached the limit of that discussion, as evidenced by this thread's 11 hour dormancy before your revival

and i feel like we've sorta reached the limit of that discussion, as evidenced by this thread's 11 hour dormancy before your revival

you guys are being real weirdos lol

sorry for not sitting on ilx for 11 hours in order to type prompt responses ... still think matt is right to point out there's a weird 'have it both ways' aspect to the defense of his fanbase, about which we can't speculate unless its in defense of their attachment to his music for wholly righteous reasons

no one has trouble saying that a large percentage of ie drill is animated by weird perverts who sit on r/chiraq and I dont really see this as much different tbh

it doesn't invalidate the music or someone but no one is saying it does, to me you guys sound like, overly defensive based on what people are saying here

dogg, it was 3%.

I don't know one working musician who wouldn't kill his next door neighbor for a 3% uptick in sales

And, sorry to nitpick this, but it was a 102% increase in album sales (and 67% increase in song downloads). It was streaming numbers that increased by 3% (don't know why streams and sales keep getting confused here).

david i’ve engaged in plenty of speculation in this thread with plenty of speculators bcuz most ppl on here can only theorize about the motivations of his fans bcuz they haven’t listened to the music. which is fine! i’m not trying to assign ppl homework & there is no barrier to entry to post in an ILX thread. i’ve just said that the usefulness of such conversation has hard limits because it just devolves into what both sides have accused the other of doing — engaging in speculative fan fiction. the fact that this thread had died before you revived it is evidence of the fact that those limits have likely been reached. as someone who likes to discuss actual music i’m sure you can understand my perspective here

i have no idea what goes on r/chiraq, i don’t really care, i don’t talk to ppl who think or talk about music thru the lens of perverted reddit posters, so that entire line of argument is completely irrelevant to me. you and whiney can get in touch privately to circle jerk over your personal taxonomies of reddit posters if that’s something that is interesting to you

It's not fan fiction to look at his numbers immediately following 'being cancelled' and drawing conclusions from them. Nor did anyone say all of his fans are racists or listening entirely because he was a victim of the libs, just that he benefitted from the culture war on that front.

It's also not fan fiction to talk about country fans' tendency to be white Christians but it does leave out big elements of what that means by talking about their comfort with the concept of sin and redemption while ignoring the rest of the ideological package of white Christian America and how that package might, in fact, play directly to his benefit vis a vis 'cancellation.'

J0rdan addressed your last paragraph yesterday.

Not really - not making a value judgement'however flimsy their morals or actions are in reality' doesn't really compute. Their favored sin and redemption narratives don't exist in a vacuum.

if you guys wanna talk about christianity as a larger topics knock yourselves out

i’ve already explained a number of times as to why that streaming data only has so much meaning beyond surface level interpretations bcuz we have extremely minimal context for what steaming data actually means historically. (this is true of course for basically any statistic involving streaming data. post malone was just crowned the record holder for most diamond singles in the history of recorded music. you may find that distinction a bit coincidental, or ahistorical, given his overlap with a streaming economy in which popular artists can rack up extreme ‘sales’ numbers bcuz we now tabulate all plays instead of simply all purchases or all radio spins. what does it actually mean that post malone has the most diamond singles in music history? is your “conclusion” that post malone is the most successful pop artist of all time?) the conclusions you think are being drawn are actually hypotheses. this is a 5th grade science project level understanding of what those terms mean in relation to data, to be honest. anyway, again, hypotheses and theories are fine, that’s largely what this discussion has consisted of, including my own involvement, but i guess i’ll say one more time that i think such discussions have a hard ceiling of usefulness, and then bow out of this particular argument cuz i’m just repeating myself over and over

there’s also album sales data, it’s not just streaming (why are we just talking about streaming??)

the sales data that has been posted says he sold 25,000 copies of dangerous in the week after the slur. in relation to the number of hard copies of albums typically sold in a given week these days, that is a notable though not outlandish figure. but as a percentage of his fanbase it's so infinitesimal as to be meaningless, in my opinion. the article linked below says he sold 840,000 tickets to his dangerous tour in the US. 25,000 is essentially 3% of 840,000. so we're talking about 3% of his fanbase going out and buying a protest album in the week after the video came out?

https://countrynow.com/morgan-wallen-wraps-record-breaking-dangerous-tour-earns-7th-no-1-with-you-proof/

The fucking Locust 7” sold like 20,000 copies, this is such a tiny fraction of anything

25,000 is essentially 3% of 840,000. so we're talking about 3% of his fanbase going out and buying a protest album in the week after the video came out?

He went on to become the biggest star in the genre after having a year wiped from playlisting … again I think you guys are delusional if you think artists in other genres survive something like that, and not only survive, but thrive

first off all he was already the biggest star in the genre & verging on one of the biggest stars in the history of the genre before any of this happened, so there was no “went on”

and your other point is just completely ludicrous. the entire first portion of eminem’s career, on a mainstream level, was defined by his use of slurs. he has merely thrived to the point of being one of the most respected and commercially successful artists in the history of rap. chris brown has been the top dog in male R&B unabated since he bloodied rihanna, assaulted numerous other women, tried to sabotage his career in myriad number of ways, doesn’t matter dude has a top 10 hit every year. kodak black stood trial for rape and then immediately released a song that became a top 10 hit, has continued to say horrible foul shit to women in public, has had even bigger hits, and was just the centerpiece guest on an album by rap’s only pulitzer prize winner. xxxtentacion… do i even need to get into this one? tay-k’s entire career was quite literally based on him killing some random innocent people and then making a song about how he was on the run from justice. the grammys just created a whole lifetime achievement award around dr. dre *this year*. you wouldn’t have to throw a rock further than 3 feet to hit a gay guy in brooklyn who will say “fuck dr. luke” and still hang on kim petras’ every move. that same point goes for just about every person i know who likes doja cat… “kiss me more” is just too much of a bop tho right? david bowie adopted fascism as an aesthetic and called hitler a rock star at the height of his fame. different time? doesn’t count? too close to the actual holocaust? your argument is full of shit dude, sorry.

XXX and Kodak basically had full media/radio blackout too

that part is immaterial, honestly. is the implication that fans of artists who have done way worse shit than say a slur are less responsible for their support of said artists if there was not an institutional blackout in response to their crimes? the industry never wavered in its support of chris brown so we shouldn’t expect his fans to stop supporting him? kodak black never got dropped from rap caviar so… we shouldn’t expect his streams to drop even tho everyone knows he’s a shitty person with documented assault allegations who routinely does creepy shit to women in public? it’s a nonsensical argument

xxxxpost His songs returned to Country radio in August 2021. So that was about 6 months.

And he was taken off of Spotify featured playlists for One Week

J0rdan, thank you for breaking down the album sales; I agree the bump doesn't seem as significant when viewed that way (even if you would hope that 0% of an artist's fan base would make "protest buys" in that situation).

according to Billboard, 25% of his US revenue for 2021 sales and streaming came in the 9 days after the video surfaced.

The album was released 25 days before the video surfaced. I wonder what percentage of his US revenue for 2021 sales and streaming came in those 25 days?

J0rdan, thank you for breaking down the album sales; I agree the bump doesn't seem as significant when viewed that way (even if you would hope that 0% of an artist's fan base would make "protest buys" in that situation).

― Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Wayne Manor (morrisp), Thursday, May 11, 2023 11:27 AM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I was tellin J0 that if someone told me the % of people that would immediately stop or start listening to an artist as a response to a controversy was 3%, I would find that stat totally believable. I still hear MJ all the time. Chappelle stays touring arenas. People without online brainworms don't have the time nor inclination to litigate this shit then translate it into an informed consumer decision

I think a lot about when Seinfeld went on Letterman and let Michael Richards do his apology and had to go IT'S NOT FUNNY! STOP LAUGHING! because the audience of New York tourists had no fucking clue what Kramer was on about

xpost yes, it's not like the video came after his album had fallen off the charts. Those post-video sales were also coming off of an on-going promotional campaign.

yes, and it didn't fall off the charts after those 9 days either. it spent 10 weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 and 15 weeks on top of the country chart.

It's the longest running top ten album in history.

Beyoncé said "sp*z" and her album was immediately knocked from number one by Bad Bunny. Makes you think.

Eminem did not get wiped from playlisting. Neither did xxx, neither did Kodak, and neither does Kim Petras. Chris brown is playlisted all the time. Of the younger artists mentioned, ie the ones relevant to the current cultural paradigm, their careers were at the very least *set back* by what happened. Kodak is not at the center of the genre in the way this guy is to his. Tay k’s career is in jail so I’m not sure what the point of bringing that up is.

If your point is that anti social behavior can bolster artists in other genres, no shit .. that’s exactly what I meant when I brought up drill. But it does feel like country music fans rallied around this guy in a way that reflects an anti-woke industry dynamic, in a way that has lead to him being the leading voice in the genre

Obviously, as I said earlier, not all of them would explain it as “anti woke” or frame it in those terms, but it’s fundamentally underlying his continued success in a way I maintain you guys are being far too dismissive about

i have access to luminate (formerly nielsen), the company that tabulates all data for billboard charts, bcuz of my work. here is the streaming and airplay data from the 8 weeks starting w/ dangerous being released and continuing on past the slur video. this is catalog data meaning streams for both dangerous & all his previous records

notes: the dates here are all the final day of data counting for the given week. "radio audience" is a measure based on the number of radio spins. i don't feel like digging into each's week data to look at how many spins he did, but just for reference in the first week where he had a "radio audience" of 68 million that was equal to roughly 20,000 spins. and these are "on demand" streams, US only, meaning apple, spotify, youtube, pandora etc

1/14/21 (dangerous first week)

259 million streams / 68 million radio audience

1/21/21

194 million streams / 61 million radio audience

1/28/21

172 million streams / 59 million radio audience

*tmz video is posted feb 2*

2/4/21

180 million streams / 42 million radio audience

2/11/21

171 million streams / 1.2 million radio audience

2/18/21

131 million streams / 1.1 million radio audience

2/25/21

130 million streams / 1.2 million radio audience

3/4/21

122 million streams / 1.9 million radio audience

so yes, it's true that there was a slight streaming uptick in the tracking period that encompassed the first three days (feb 2/3/4) after the video's release. but by the next tracking period the streams had dipped back down to the number from the week prior to the video, and three weeks after that he had lost 50 million streams. if you extend it out another month -- to the tracking period ending on 4/8/21 -- he did 100 million streams. his streaming numbers were in decline every week through the tracking period ending on 5/20/21, when he did 89 million streams. so his streaming numbers essentially were cut in half in the ~3 months following the slur. you see the first uptick the next week (5/28/21), where he jumps from 89 million streams to 91 million streams. this seems to coincide with his first public performance (on 5/19/21) since the slur, but it dropped down the next period, and for the period ending on 6/10/21 he was under 85 million.

for everyone's sake i'll stop here, but the data beyond just the first week shows that his streams were cut pretty severely over time. he's continued to be a massive star setting all sorts of album chart records but that's because he was already starting from the insane heights reached when he released dangerous (260 million streams).

what that first week data really shows is that when a musician is in the news because of a controversy, people are basically reminded to listen to their music. frank ocean was brought up as an example earlier. here is a post on jezebel looking at different cancelled artists & their streaming data... r kelly's streams had a spike in the week following his gayle king interview, for instance

https://jezebel.com/these-musicians-were-canceled-but-people-kept-listenin-1840150589

for reference, last week wallen did 260 million streams. so you could maybe say his audience has returned to where it was when he dropped dangerous, but these are cumulative numbers including another 36 song album, so if his audience was completely unaffected -- or had grown -- we would probably expect to see even higher numbers

and just for fun here are last week's catalog numbers (US only) for some major artists if anyone is interested

taylor swift -- 317 million
morgan wallen -- 260 million
drake -- 194 million
the weeknd -- 113 million
sza -- 104 million
bad bunny -- 60 million

and now i should get back to my actual job...

Had no idea chastising country fans was a felony

https://i.ibb.co/RDkRH8C/Screenshot-20240408-152410.jpg

This guy may have a problem.

Apparently he threw a chair from the top of a sixth story rooftop bar down to the street below.

he did. the felony comes from almost hitting two cops (so I guess he has some redeeming qualities amidst the awfulness)

off a six-story building ... damn, dude is fortunate he's not facing assault or manslaughter or whatever.

I feel like there should be a term for dropping things off a building onto cops

Morgan Baller

what a dope. glad no one was hurt.

I'm surprised the cops didn't open fire, mistaking the chair for falling acorns.

What color was the chair?

So this was at Eric Church's bar. I wonder if it's classier than Kid Rock's bar (where Wallen was also arrested.)

I Love This Bar (But Not This Chair) and Grill

tbf He mistook the chair for Obama

I'm especially glad no one was hurt/killed because I cannot think of a worse evening than blowing money in Nashville's most obnoxious tourist trap bars and then being crushed by a chair thrown by Morgan Wallen

that's one for the epitaph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nh-NsqBsGE

lol