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    • My Thoughts: The Weeknd – Unconventional Success

    The Weeknd – Unconventional Success

    I am a true fan of music in the traditional sense. Most diehard music fans, such as myself, like to discover new music on our own. We sometimes take referrals from friends who we feel have good taste but for the most part, it is all about the personal hunt. The Internet (obviously) has made it a lot easier to share and discover new music and, of course, our favorite blogs may post a thing or two we might like.

    I still believe there is that undeniable psychology that makes people gravitate towards new artists and their music. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I believe that it exists. I think a lot of new artists don’t understand that psychology, so they think it is a good idea to spam their way to the top (which never works), using social media to contact every single person they know and don’t know to force-feed them their music. It is quite aggravating and disrespectful at times.

    I believe music should be discovered organically, but today’s artist feels the need to bombard you with their tracks and if you don’t want to pay attention you get labeled as a hater. Weird right? Yeah, I know… I wasn’t buying the shit people were peddling.

    I’ve had my fair amount of “beefs” with new artists and managers who feel that they have to be put on by me. To be honest, I just like finding things on my own or through referrals from friends. I don’t care much for the spam, or the emails, or the tweets about your new artist. I think most of my friends who run successful music blogs feel the exact same way I do.

    Most of us like music we feel no one else knows about as well. That impression of having it all to yourself and your circle of friends is a big part of the music we truly love. When it gets big we still love it, but we remember the good ol’ days when we shared it amongst one another first.

    Obviously, blogging has now become a real business and most bloggers have to post what’s going to get them the most amount of hits or traffic so they can satisfy the advertisers. That’s why mostly big artists get love on the main blogs, because it naturally casts a wider net. You might also see a new artist getting love if they were able to create an undeniable buzz that forces people to pay attention, which brings me to my point.

    How did the Weeknd (apparently pronounced ‘weakened’, not ‘week-end’) do it? I’ve never received an email or spam promoting The Weeknd from any spam list and trust me: with the amount of spam I get, I am on just about every list. Not many people outside of his circle knew what he looked like, what his style was or even if they were a band, a group or a solo artist.

    He declined interviews from some major publications and has never done any interviews that you can find online, yet his song ends up as the trailer for a major HBO show, Entourage.

    How did he do it? Some will argue that Drake’s tweet(s) is the reason. Well, I have to disagree. It did, however, make people pay attention (i.e. the blogosphere). The streets have been playing the Weeknd for some time now. My brother put me onto to him back in December and young girls from LA have been posting his songs on Tumblr, months before the hype machine really took off.

    Last night, he had a sold-out show in Toronto and the lineup started at 10am. Mind you, it was his very first show ever and it was packed with people singing word-for-word. How was he able to achieve all of this without spamming music executives, email blasts and tweets begging to be heard? I think it boils back down to the psychology of the music fan that I mentioned earlier. They loved discovering it on their own, they love the mystery behind the artist and they allowed the music to speak for itself. Yes, the Drake co-sign helped, but I don’t think a Drake tweet could help a Bow Wow, for example, to get back to where he once was. I don’t even think a Drake tweet could even help another new artist become successful in any short amount of time. I think there is so much more at play and it comes down to the approach, the organic way of communicating the message.

    What made The Weeknd sticky? He wasn’t in our faces like so many other new artists try to be. He kept to himself and his craft, and made good music. He did not spam, did not tweet execs, did not have marketing teams reach out on his behalf and all that other shit everyone else is doing. It feels like he took us back to how music was discovered and heard before the Internet. I believe it kind of all happened trough word of mouth and good planning. Drake’s tweet did shed light on him for the most part, but that is no different than Janet Jackson going on Letterman back in the day and telling him how she loved a new artist by the name of Glenn Lewis. The major co-sign can only bring you so far. The rest is up to you and your ability as an artist. Some artists are special. Others, no matter how hard they try, just aren’t.

    I have to say that I am really proud of the OVO gang for doing this for a second time. First Drake, now with Abel. Maybe these guys have psychology degrees, or perhaps they just understand human nature really well.

    Oh yeah: apparently, he killed the show and had a great performance, which means they’ve learned from the small mistakes they’d made with Drake on this one.

    I am really looking forward to see where they take this. Canada, you no longer have an excuse.

     

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