The singer tweeted that soon artists will get back to making good music.
While stacking massive numbers are impressive, it’s not the only thing that makes an artist great. In today’s social media-driven culture, the measure an artist, and tentimes a person, is based upon numbers: likes, follows, sales, etc. In the music industry, artists are on a never-ending quest to acquire new fans who will buy into their image and talents, but sometimes the former becomes more important than the latter. As artists have the ability to self-publish without the micro-management a label, it gives them the freedom to share their music with the world with the click a button.
However, the downside that is the lack filtration, as many artists answer to few, if any, executives or managers who are more concerned with the quality their music than with the quantity their followers. There’s nothing wrong with artists doing it for themselves and refusing to be entangled in soul-sucking contracts. Yet, we live in a culture over oversaturation when it comes to the releasing and availability new music. It’s all about how much you can sell and creating art with the purpose debuting at the top the charts.
T-Pain dropped some knowledge about the industry on Twitter by writing, “One day we’ll get back to the music when the popularity contests get old. At this point the numbers only have meaning to the ppl that don’t know how much they’re being fabricated. Understandable tho. It’s a game. Someone has to get played.” This message comes amid the rumored drama regarding DJ Khaled’s Father Ashad debuting at number 2 on Billboard charts behind Tyler, The Creator‘s IGOR. There have been reports that Khaled was none-too-happy with Billboard following the company dropping 100,000 his sales because they weren’t approved.