Halsey - If I Can't Have Love I Want Power (August 27, 2021) Album • Page 15

It’s crazy how quickly album cycles come and go. I figured she’d still be promoting “If I Can’t Have Love.”

 

The entirety of how much the industry is laser focusing on TikTok, and really social media in general, is wild. 9 out of 10 times it doesn’t matter what gigs you’re playing or who you’re working with, it’s how many Instagram followers do you have and what’s your average view count on TikTok. It can all be a great tool to get your name and music out there, but it shouldn’t be the end all be all. It’s gotten incredibly frustrating.

 

It's too late, I'm already preparing for the next platform. I'm so out of touch.

 

The fixation on TikTok for music is genuinely so demotivating as a young/new artist

 

Ugh, I hate this. If being a constant content/TikTok creator is demanded of artists as successful as Halsey, Florence, Adele, or Charli XCX, how are labels pushing emerging artists who aren’t receiving millions of streams and don’t have security behind them?

 

I know in some cases, they’re following TikTok artists who are building a following naturally and signing them. That’s what happened with Em Beihold. She had a couple hits through TikTok, had another one in the chamber that’s become her big hit and they immediately signed her so they could release it and push it.

 

I know nothing about the record industry, but it feels incredibly backwards that the label is expecting the artist have to do their own promotion as a prerequisite to releasing music.

It feels like it should be the label & management's job to promote and distribute whatever the artist makes, not decide whether to distribute it based on if the promotion goes well.

 

Capitalism sucks! It’s what happens when you think about artists as investments and there are so many talented people trying to get signed that you switch to a different metric than A&R know-how (such as identifying their existing audience and proven passion).

That said, Halsey seems like she’s been able to kind of do whatever she wants with regards to her last few albums. She had an iMax film!

 

no idea if Halsey is actually doing this but this is absolutely a real thing, yeah

 

iirc, Halsey and Sky may have had beef way back in the day.

 

Honestly the debate over whether this whole thing is a publicity stunt is uhhh, boring as hell.

Like regardless of whether or not H's representation of Capitol Records is accurate, the industry practices she's describing are very real, and she should speak up about them. Plus, if it's all just a scam to push their new single, who cares? At least we get new Halsey music out of it.

 

IDK some people find it interesting to discuss these things and understand more about them?

 

Record labels definitely do shady shitty things like this all the time.

Michelle Branch recorded a (great) album back in like 2009 that Warner shelved and never released because they thought they could wait until that style of music became relevant again. It never got released, but someone ended up leaking it a couple years ago.

Back when I worked at Sony I remembered coming across ALOT of artists that they signed, album delivered, and just shelved. Labels suck, go independent.

 

Does this have a proper title? I'd love to track it down and give it a listen.

 

Enjoy, it's a blast! Sunset Cigarette is an absolute banger.

Michelle Branch: West Coast Time (2012) (Full Album) : Michelle Branch Channel : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

Regarding Michelle Branch, what's sadder is that it happened after Warner had already almost shelved another project. Everything Comes And Goes was originally a full album that got downgraded to an EP. The unreleased songs are out there too.

 

The crazy thing about Michelle Branch is that, at the time, she wasn't a low tier artist. Her two prior albums had both gone platinum, and spawned multiple top 40 hits. Labels dont just shelve the little guys...artists like Branch and Halsey are still just as vulnerable to their shit.

 

For someone who had legitimately never used TikTok, are independent artists actually using the platform to break or is it just artists who have marketing machines behind them?

 

Both. Just depends

 

Mostly started as the former but after stuff like Old Town Road went massive labels started diverting an absurd amount of their focus to it

 

Both. Solo musicians are also blowing up and getting instrument brand endorsements and stuff in that world. There’s a kid who plays jazz drums in a suit in his bedroom and he blew up. Dude’s got a few endorsements and has been flown out to Drumeo to record lesson content. Unless you’re on a huge pop star gig or something, you can’t get anywhere no matter what else you do if there’s no TikTok following. It’s absurd and definitely not sustainable.

 

Blu De Tiger would be a good example of an authentic one

Gayle is one that was obviously management