Do Established Artist Take Their Fans For Granted?

Recently, there have been many discussions revolving around the music industry and fandoms. How often should an artist release music, is good music curated over time? A bigger question speaks to an ever growing concern in regards to established acts.

Let's get into it.

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The music industry: the place where dreams are made from.

Lol, that was a good one huh? Actually, let's take a bit of wisdom from the best selling female rapper of all time:

When quizzed recently by an ambitious young news reporter named Jazzy on what it takes to be a successful musician in today's world, Minaj related three things "...You have to have faith in God, right? I think that you have to be consistent, you have to work very hard... you cannot expect anyone to give you anything, you cannot expect to be treated differently, you got to work so, so, so ,so, so hard...and you have to be consistent with your hard work...and what you're doing has to really be your passion..."

With these words in mind, one might quip "How important is it for artist to care about their music and their audience?"

Some would say a whole lot! I mean afterall, being an artist is a career and like every other career it takes work. But what's particular and specific to the music industry is how fickle it is.

With the inventions of the internet, independent music distributors & social media, there has become an influx of new music artist on the scene on a daily basis. No more are music listeners reliant on the major music industry to provide them music. However, with the monopoly the major music industry holds, only certain artist continue to get the push they truly deserve, well most of the big ones.

With that said, there have been many times where an artist waiting so long to put out music has caused their audience to twindle. Take for instance Fergie.

Arguably an integral piece of The Black Eyes Peas, as a solo artist Fergie had great success with her intial 2006 debut album "The Duchess" scoring her 5 multi platinum hits and selling over 5 million copies in the United States alone.

However, it would be another 11 years before we got a new Fergie album entitled "Double Duchess" after having massive success with her group The Black Eyed Peas for years and then finally opting to leave and pursue her solo career again.

Though several contributing factors can be pinpointed for it's performance, time could arguably be the biggest. "Double Duchess" unlike it's older sister, sold less than 40,000 copies in the United States. That's less than 1 percent of what her first album sold!

Now granted, I've never considered numbers everything, but it would seem that a substantial amount of her fanbase was lost, unaware or disinterested within that time frame (which happened to include album pushbacks and switching to be an independent artist. )

Another great example would be Fifth Harmony darling Normani.

After having a successful career as a part of a best selling girl group, the "Love Lies" singer opted to be a solo artist and snagged a few hit songs as features on the likes of household artist Khalid and Sam Smith's singles. And when it came time for Normani to show up and show out for her official debut single "Motivation" she snagged herself a platinum hit and set a Spotify record for monthly listeners without an album.

Unfortunately, though Normani released her most successful single yet "Wild Side" last year which hit the top 20 on the billboard hot 100. Yet, she has failed to materialize an album of her own much to her fans chagrin.

And so finally we get to what brought upon this article. Recently, Bajan Popp Superstar Rihanna released her first single in 6 years "Lift Me Up" the lead single from the 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" soundtrack and many fans were lessed than please.

However to top it off, when asked if she were to release a new album (that has been expected for over 6 years) since she is performing at the Superbowl, Rihanna gave a startling answer.

Though, Rihanna implied new music in some form would be coming, she states her album is still not together after 6 years of recording and not releasing material.

Such news sent fans into a frenzy and then an outrage leading me to pause the question...

Do artist take their fans for granted?

In my own thoughts, I think in some situations established artist do. As Minaj suggested, it takes faith, a lot of hard work and consistency to be a thriving artist in the music business. And though a quality body of work could take time to surface, many times it seems as though established artist become comfortable in their success. They begin to lose drive, hunger and passion for what they once worked so hard to accumulate. I think many up and coming artist don't always necessarily have much of a say as to when their albums come out.

Either way, unfortunately, it seems as though time can kill any momentum or hope an artist may have to thrive.

But what are your thoughts?