6 Things Beyoncé Just Proved With Her New Album
If you had told us a week ago that Beyoncé was going to drop an album out of nowhere on Friday the 13th, we would've laughed. And we wouldn't have been alone. Dropping a mixtape, much less an album, without any warning is a surefire way to fail. You need promotion for an album to be successful. You need to do interviews. You need radio play and a hit single and at least one or two other songs on the album that people are familiar with and…
By now, we realize how wrong we would have been about everything we just said. Because even without promotion, a hit single and a slew of radio and TV interviews, Beyoncé's self-titled fifth album was a hit. It set a new iTunes record by selling more than 828,000 copies worldwide in the first three days that it was available for purchase. And by releasing the album, Beyoncé has changed the game. Here, 7 things Beyoncé proved with her new album.
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#1. People will still buy music, if you give them a good reason to buy it.
In 2013, a lot of people out there simply refuse to buy music. And can you really blame them? There are so many mixtapes, EPs and albums that drop that it would be damn near impossible to buy all of them and still pay rent every month. But a lot of those same people were quick to whip out their credit cards (and iTunes gift cards) to snatch up Beyoncé's latest project.
Because of the way she released it, it had a very "YOU NEED TO BUY THIS NOW!" feel to it. And even though people are strapped for cash because of the holidays, they didn't mind shelling out $16 for it. Just check the sales.
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#2. People enjoy experiencing a big album like Beyoncé's together, if they're given the opportunity to do it.
Every now and then, a highly-anticipated album will leak and everyone will gather on Twitter and Facebook to talk about it as they listen through it. But because leaks obviously aren't controlled by artists, the timing of them doesn't always make that possible. For instance, if a big album leaks on, say, Tuesday at 11 a.m., not everyone is around to critique it on Twitter.
But by releasing her album at midnight on a Friday morning, Beyoncé basically gave her fans a three-day weekend to experience the album and converse about it on social media (it's a lot easier to drop everything and spend an entire Friday listening to an album than it is to do it on, say, a Wednesday). So don't be surprised if you see more artists trying to control when their albums drop, right down to the minute.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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#3. Music videos are still very important, even though there aren't a lot of television networks that are still devoted to playing them.
Artists haven't stopped making music videos in recent years. But most TV networks have stopped playing them, so their impact has been lessened. Beyoncé just proved that that doesn't mean artists should stop making them, though. In fact, it appears as though she thinks they need to make more of them. And additionally, they need to package them within albums in order to give people the chance to absorb both the music and the music videos at the same time.
There's something to be said for how Beyoncé used visuals for her album. She made them an important part of the album and, in doing so, made the music video itself important again.
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#4. The element of surprise is something that musicians need to use a lot more often.
By the time most artists release a project, we know just about everything there is to know about it. We know who the guests will be. We know who produced songs for it. In some cases, we even know the concept behind it. And as a result, we've already prejudged what we think the album will be like. But because we didn't know any of those things before listening to Beyoncé's new album, we walked in with an open mind and heard the album without any preconceptions.
Believe it or not, that's how it used to be before the element of surprise was removed from music. And we would like to see it go back to being that way with more artists dropping surprise songs and albums on us without any notice. Or, at the very least, without explaining the entire album before it hits stores.
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#5. The number of social media followers that artists have across various platforms is important.
Sometimes, we'll see that an artist has, say, 10 million followers and think, "How many of those people would actually buy an album by that artist?" The truth is that you can have 10 million followers and still only manage to sell 10,000 albums in your first week in stores. But Beyoncé proved that while social media followers don't necessarily equal sales, social media followers are the ones who are going to help promote your album when you have no other promotion.
Beyoncé's followers helped spread the word about her album very quickly and, in essence, served as the advertisers for it. So social media followers do count for something when it comes to sales.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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#6. Beyoncé will go down as one of the greatest artists of her generation.
We could have made an argument for this before she dropped her album on Friday. Now? It's not even a question. From what she's done on stage to what she's done in the studio to what she's now doing to change the way that music is released, Beyoncé will go down in history. Bank on it.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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