Check out the Stones’ top 5 streams on Spotify and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the numbers: while they’re far outpaced by the likes of Chainsmokers and even Coldplay, they’re in line with U2, somewhat more popular than Zeppelin (who in fairness were late to the medium and are not active) and significantly more popular than Macca (who in fairness is not the Beatles). At least by this narrow metric, they’re in the same league as Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

This suggests to me that Joyce Smyth, Mick and co. are doing something right. The 2009 remasters that mean very little to us are reaching the people they were *meant to reach*.

I’d go so far as to say the band is in better shape now than they were in the early-2000s pre-streaming era.

What does this mean for the “new album” that seems forever in gestation? I can’t be sure. I’m thinking virtually out loud. But it could very well mean that the noise we’ve been hearing about batches of singles, different iterations of the same songs, or even an EP might have substance behind it.

When Mick dropped that single, it seemed like the format worked because the songs were topical for the Trump/Brexit era and because Keith apparently didn’t think much of them. But we should also consider that Mick was simply dry-running the piecemeal release of new music. Sure, the songs “bombed” — but there’s no reason to think future Stones songs will suffer the same fate.

One last thought: it’s very fashionable for big artists to put out music by surprise:

[www.billboard.com]

The Stones have lost the element of surprise with *us*, but probably not the general public.

Who knows. We will all find out soon enough. Or not.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2018-11-21 18:16 by MelBelli.

Very, very good points, MelBelli! There was a lot of experiment in distribution of Jagger's single, and in the whole concept of it, so despite it not doing very well commercially, perhaps they were really testing the waters there. To get familair with the new concept. Who knows if they are up to some novel thing which might surprise even us. Most likely there will be some old school album some day, but the path there might go via some odd ways...

Nice to know that the Stones are doing rather well in streams. Yeah, for a band known more of their great songs (a singles band, as they once were) than of their albums, it could be that the new format suits to them and to their legacy. To pick up a great individual song from here and there.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-11-21 18:30 by Doxa.

Look at artists that have nowhere near the status of the Stones that release music in the various ways through social media, digital, whatever - they WANT to.

They're making music, new music.

I don't think age has anything to do with it, it's intent. The Stones aren't in that arena anymore, they're mostly about touring and making money on nostalgia, hence the reason this new LP is no big deal to finish and release, and why BLUE AND LONESOME was such a big deal, because they finally did something, it was a surprise for the general public, but the record took 3 days for the band to record, a few more days for overdubs, mixing, etc, the 3 minutes it took to brickwall it, the 5 minutes for artwork, apparently, then sat around for a long time until it came out.

Mick makes a point about doing some new songs and releases two tracks, saying how he wanted to release some new music. But, yawn, no surprise, there hasn't been anything since. Keith spent 4 years or whatever on an album.

The Stones may have the element of their fanbase being older so they do traditional vinyl and compact disc LP releases as well as the newer ie iTunes, Google Play, DVD, Blu-ray but will they go the next step and do the text message download for something new? If anyone is going to spend money to record a song or album and just put it on Spotify and iTunes, why bother with iTunes since having it on Spotify etc will not incentify many to pay for downloading it?

If artists are just going to give their music away they might as well do the text message release and have the song download from the website like some artists are doing now.

They'll stumble, if that's possible, deeper into the digital era, but at some point it won't matter if it's all on streaming anyway.