It's impossible to gain the public's attention. And when you've got it you want to hold it as long as possible. This is the genius of video games. Could take weeks to get to the end, maybe months, and some go on forever! The hardest part is getting people to partake, then you've got to keep them as long as you can.

For a while there it was believed that releasing a track every week or month was a good plan. But assuming you've got traction to begin with, assuming you make music that many people will cotton to, that's no longer a good way to do it. This does not mean you can't drop a track here or there, especially if it's a collaboration, but you need to save up all your stuff for one big drop when you can gain as much attention as possible, and then KEEP IT!

The new Morgan Wallen album "I'm the Problem" has thirty seven songs. It lasts for an hour and fifty seven minutes. You may not be interested at all. And unlike in the old days, if you don't care, you not only do not have to partake, you won't even be exposed to it! Top Forty radio? Who's listening to that? This is not 1973 and Charlie Rich's "Most Beautiful Girl" crossing over from country to Top Forty, such that listeners who loved rock find themselves not only listening, but knowing every word...today you don't listen to anything you don't want to!

I was at a dinner party with boomers and they started talking about TV commercials. I had no idea what they were talking about, I hadn't seen a single one, I no longer watch television in a linear fashion, but what I want when I want. And yes, there are ad-supported tiers on streaming services, but most people pay to avoid the spots.

But my point is if you don't want to see it, if you don't want to hear it, you don't have to!

If you're a subscriber to SiriusXM and you hear what you don't like you can find a bunch of channels in the same genre, never mind scores in other genres. And if you're listening on Spotify, et al, the world is yours.

So, once again, it doesn't matter if you don't like Morgan Wallen, a ton of people do, to the point where he's having his own festival, Sand in My Boots, down in Alabama, a state you might never have been to, not even been close to, at this very moment. How many other acts do you know who can headline their own festival?

Yes, Morgan Wallen is the biggest recording artist in America, but he's still competing against not only the new, but the old, the greatest hits of all time available at a fingertip's click.

So if you drive a wedge into public consciousness...you try to take as much air out of the room as possible.

Furthermore, Wallen is playing today's country music which is like the rock of yore. Modern rock, Active Rock, is a marginal world, the word on the street is rock is dead when in truth it's just morphed into country.

So you labor over your twelve tracks and release them to crickets and...

Once again, attention comes first, fans come first, which is why major labels will only sign acts that have proven their mettle, have the data to show it. Doesn't matter how good you are anymore, but whether you have an audience!

And the question becomes whether you can grow that audience to something that resembles ubiquity. Which is why the majors tend to only be interested in hip-hop and pop, because they have the most market share. You can have diehard fans as a jam band, does anybody have more hard core fans than Phish? But how many more people want to listen to Phish?

So either you're pouring out material, doing gigs, active on social media to gain an audience and build a career or...

You've got a career and how do you monetize it and make it even bigger?

The rappers started putting out double CDs/long albums decades ago. Drake puts out a mixtape. But the traditional white audience saw that as anathema, IT'S TOO MUCH MUSIC!

Not to fans. Fans can't get enough music. They want more and more!

Furthermore, these long albums are review-proof. They're just too long and too dense to be adequately assessed by snapshot, which is how most reviewers do their work. They listen to an album for a day, maybe a few more, and render an opinion. Morgan Wallen FANS may be discovering new tunes SIX MONTHS FROM NOW! It took decades for the public, even most reviewers, to catch up with "Exile on Main Street," now considered to be a masterpiece, and that was a double album with only eighteen songs that last an hour and seven minutes. How long is it going to take for people to digest, never mind assess, "I'm the Problem"?

We live in a world of winners and losers. And the winners take up ever more airspace/mindspace. You need to take all that you can, because there are too many other distractions/options. After listening to ten tracks for a week or two listeners are on to something else!

This is one of the reasons that Taylor Swift's remake albums are successful. In theory, they shouldn't be, they're note by note recreations of already existing material. But the public wants MORE!

But there is such a thing as overexposure. How do you manage your career such that people don’t get sick of you?

First. beware of celebratory press. If it's not moving the needle in terms of audience, increasing it and bonding people to you, forgo it. If there's a story, it must have some nougat, something interesting, we are sick of pronouncements of record setting grosses/streams/sales. Even the most jaded person knows the numbers are manipulated and there's a limit to how much self-attention, self-burnishing, LOOK AT ME press someone can get without alienating the public.

But Wallen only puts out an album every couple of years. And it's got enough tracks that they carry the audience through until the next one! Used to be an act put out an album, hard core fans devoured it, and then they were subjected to dripped-out singles from it for years, with record companies and acts trying to reach the casual/normally disinterested fan. No, today you satiate the hard core and forget about the penumbra. If the hard core can't spread the word for you you're doing something wrong, better go back to the drawing board. You deliver the goods to the audience and then they are in control of your fate. BUT GIVE THEM ENOUGH TO WORK WITH!


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