Everything Is Changing.

Y’all notice not much is sticking anymore?

I can’t remember too many hit songs, movies, or memorable performances from the past two years that have really stuck & made a mark. Funny thing is movies & music are still being released at a rapid rate, perhaps too rapid. 

Netflix at the beginning of the year said they were committed to releasing one new movie every week for 2021, there’s a new blockbuster movie to stream on HBO Max & Disney Plus Premier (their $30 deal) almost every month as opposed to going to the theaters, & popular artists from pre-COVID are releasing new music almost every week. 

Looking at the numbers you begin to notice something is wrong though. Let’s start with the music industry. 

Billie Eillish one of the biggest pop stars at the moment released her second studio album this year & according to RIAA certification her previous album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” was number one in the US & went 4x Platinum. Around 4,000,000 sales worldwide!

Now if you look at this year her newest album, “Happier Than Ever” also went number one in the US but doesn’t even have an official RIAA certification yet (that I know about) & only made 153,000 sales in the US (according to Wikipedia). Compare that to 1,024,000 sales in the US of her previous album to realize she only sold 15% of what she did only two years ago. That’s a huge drop! 

Of course you can make excuses of being a one hit wonder (I personally think Billie has a lot more great music in store), the softer tonal shift in her newest album, or just say what the actual problem is: music is best experienced in community & living in a world that is hopefully more post-COVID, soon we’ll be able to build back to that. 

Now let’s look at the movie industry. 

Marvel is know for releasing some of the biggest box office releases of the year. For example their last three movies released in 2019 (Captain Marvel, Avengers Endgame, & Spider-Man: Far From Home) all made 1 billion plus at the box office. Avengers made 2 billion plus!! 

Now transitioning to 2021 looking at the past two releases (Black Widow & Shang-Chi) both still made a profit but Black Widow didn’t even make double its budget at the theaters & Shang-Chi barely made double its budget of $200 million as well. 

We can look at this & say Shang-Chi & Black Widow are nowhere near as popular as the Avengers & Spider-Man, Black Widow (& Shang-Chi) had the option to be streamed at home & wasn’t as well reviewed as Spider-Man & the Avengers (it did get around the same amount of positive reviews as Captain Marvel tho), or we can just say what the actual problem is: movies are best experienced in community & living in a world that is hopefully more post-COVID, soon we’ll be able to build back to that. 

Hopefully right? I believe that we can but the question is do we want to?

If you knew that there was even the smallest possibility of getting sick while watching a movie with strangers or watching your favorite artist perform, is that a risk that most people are willing to take nowadays? Some are, but as seen through the numbers a lot aren’t. 

So what’s the solution? I believe it is creativity. 

When the restaurants shut down in San Francisco they built outdoor seating on the loading parking areas, when Travis Scott couldn’t perform a normal tour he did a virtual performance on Fortnite last year & it was actually pretty trippy (in a good way) & even made a deal with McDonalds to get his own custom meal to those who were interested, & as said before Disney Plus Premier & HBO Max are taking notice of their audience’s wants by offering the experience of blockbuster movies at home even if it comes with a more expensive monthly subscription. 

All that to say, everything’s changed since 2019, we can’t go back but we can go forward. 

The old way of doing things at least at this point in time feels like its been thrown out the window. To survive as artists you either adapt or get used to only getting 15% of the attention you were getting before. Opportunity is out there but the question we need to answer in 2021 is, “In this day & age what is the best way I can reach my audience even if I have to throw my old strategies out the window?” 

I’m looking forward to the creativity of artists everywhere. 

Peace. ✌️