rollout not being good is not equal to no promo

also theres is nothing to be mad about, this on track to stream the same as his last 3 albums, add in the bundle pure sales and hes gonna do 300k

these numbers are on brand for every single weeknd release

Man y'all are f***ing dumb on purpose or something

I'm not talking about the numbers, it would've been the exact same (maybe slightly more if he did more promo last week but who cares) anyways

Fader just wants to say that he did a lot of promo, which isn't the case for the last 10 weeks. That's it

Wait.

That 00xO Bonus edition slop had NO songs with Carti on it?

Can't be true

If it was any other fanbase that got scammed, I may have cared.

i don't know if it can be chalked up to no promo more than awful single choices. after hours got heartless, blinding lights, and the title track. dawn FM got take my breath. hurry up tomorrow got dancing in the flames, timeless, and sao paulo. there was nothing to get excited about unless you're a stan who cared enough to seek out the snippets.

that being said, i don't think he will flop. the months of preorders should make sure of that, and positive word of mouth could help as well.

these numbers are on brand for every single weeknd release

Exactly. Yet again his streaming numbers seem to be extremely consistent, proving what we’ve been saying that he’s never been a huge first week numbers guy and that he always does around the same figures first week

To be fair, it never listed them as bonus songs with Carti specifically

It’s kind of like an album. Some times a concise rollout is received better than a bloated dragged out rollout. I know as a fan, after a while I tuned out and wasn’t interested until the album actually dropped

I’m glad the album was great tho

These days short rollouts are way more better received than a bloated dragged out rollout imo

Is Kendrick a bigger artist than the Weeknd in the US? In my mind I had the Weeknd being way bigger.

Yup. Tyler the creator nailed the type of rollouts artists should be doing

They’re closer now than they were a few years ago, but I think Weeknd still got him beat.

Kendrick is just extremely hot right now for obvious reasons

Those rollouts work for rappers, but pop artists still do traditional rollouts man. A short rollout/surprise release in pop is extremely rare.

Weeknd tried the surprise drop/short rollout thing with Dawn and it was his least successful album since Kiss Land. It rarely works for pop music.

Idk I feel like it could’ve worked for him. I think the reason he did it like this is the album wasn’t done or he wanted to rework it

Pop artists have to find the perfect balance for it to work out for them. It’s tricky given how volatile the music industry is nowadays. If you’re gonna do a long rollout you have to make sure you nail the singles along the way

Correct. He hit one with Timeless, but missed on the first and third

I also feel like long rollouts are working better for artists like Taylor, Ariana or Olivia Rodrigo (women) because their fanbases are different and they love to wait.

The Weeknd has a lot of fans who are also tapped into rap heavily, of course he's a popstar but it's still different imo

That’s true, but man he just did it with Dawn and it underperformed. I don’t think they wanted to repeat the same approach with that in mind

Morgan Wallen really got s*** on lock

I don't blame him tbh I blame his management

They should've released Timeless, Open Hearts and Cry For Me as the singles before dropping the album. I'm 100% sure it would've hit way different.

Releasing DITF with the Apple promo unfortunately got people skeptical and then it underperformed

Dawn was just unlucky too with the Gunna release. I feel bad for him

I said this theory a few times in the album thread but I’ll say it again here:

I firmly believe that Dancing in the Flames was forced by the label.

It’s completely missing from the First Pressing vinyl, which makes no sense at all considering that it was marketed as the first single from the album and the other two singles are on that pressing instead.

I think he turned in the first version of the album to the label, they got cold feet when they realized there were no true standout radio singles, and told him to go cook up something that would fare better on radio.

Like you said, that was the wrong move considering that song didn’t connect with the GP whatsoever

You're not wrong and this could be right, it always felt like a "K-POP" moment for me because I'm pretty sure this song from Travis was forced by the label too.

Releasing DITF as the "first" single just felt wrong for many people (me too honestly) and it was even more weird with all that Apple promo that nobody really wanted

Exactly, not to mention that Weeknd had never made a song that sounded that bubblegum and pop. I still like the song but it was definitely an odd sound coming from him

The only wait length with any correlation to higher album sales is a few weeks to a month and a few weeks. Anything longer is a potential detriment to first week sales

It’s been this way since 2000 at the latest, idk why y’all acting like it’s up in the air or a case by case/genre by genre thing

I love the acoustic version tho it's lovely. They should've just put out Open Hearts as the first single honestly