These days you can’t be around females without being bombarded with Trey Songz talk. From my home girls, to my girlfriend, to her friends, they all get giggly over Trey Songz as if his music rewinds time and they’re just little girls with a crush. But isn’t that what music idols are suppose to do? From Elvis to Michael Jackson, heartthrobs are the foundation from which records have been sold since the invention of the album cover. Back to Mr. LOL Smiley face. If Trey Songz is so beloved and lusted after why isn’t he a platinum artist? For instance Trey has over 600 thousand people following him on twitter, all of them can’t be spam bots, yet his CD only sold 135k its first week. Where is the fan base? It can’t be that these women think he’s sexy but his music sucks. His music is great, some of the best R&B out in my opinion. So why isn’t good music, and a great image rewarded with less than 600k sold?
Lil Wayne came out and sold a million his first week, so urban music still sells. Sade came out and shipped gold with her album… but it’s a different age group that buys Sade albums. And there lays the problem not only with Trey Songz, but with the majority of music. Younger people bit torrent and lime wire music, the over 30 crowd is more likely to go to the store and pick up a CD.
The Problem with Trey Songz isn’t his music or his image, it’s his fan base. Susan Boyle broke Ashanti’s record for most Albums sold in a week by a female artist. She’s 40, White, fat, and British. If you’re listening to Susan Boyle you’re not the type that has lime wire installed on your computer. You’re the type that goes to Best Buy and doesn’t care about paying 12 dollars because you’re more financially stable (although if I would like to think everyone should be able to afford a damn CD). A 16 year old Trey Songz fan that has pictures of him on her wall probably had the Ready album a week before it hit stores and has burned several copies for her girlfriends at school. By the time the CD comes out, as much as she loves Trey, she’s not going to go out and pay for something she already has.
Trey Songz is just a metaphor for what the music industry has become. What was once a sure fire platinum artist, is now a gold standard due to piracy and lack of pride in your favorite artist. It now takes a phenomenal artist like Wayne, Lady GaGa, Eminem, or Taylor Swift to come out and sell records like it’s still the 90’s. Look at Rihanna (who’s CD I just got around to buying) says she gets fan mail from 27 million… yet its only sold one million. There is a big discrepancy between fans and consumers.
Ready was Trey Songz third album, a time where it’s make or break, he’s sold 540k copies so far. R was R. Kelly’s third Album it sold over 10 million copies. Who’s to blame, the music industry or the fans that don’t support artist they supposedly “love”?