The New Muscle

Now I don't know whether this is a situation we're in where major pop stars are trying to show just how impactful their names are or if they just got lazy. But why is it that major acts like Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Beyonce and others just felt this year they could drop their albums without marketing them at all and they would do just fine. Well, I guess something went right because they all were successful albums. Now the typical rhetoric for an album release is promotion through single releases, then a couple prime time appearances, moving on to dropping the videos to singles that have received high praise from critics or the pockets of consumers. After this process is complete, you get the album cover, a "leaked" album track listing, followed with one final appearance, then a couple days before the official release, the album is "leaked" and available for illegal streaming over YouTube right before they're pulled down just days before the average consumer has cashed their check and can buy the official album. But the artists above and those with pull just like them didn't do that?

I ask why? I can only speculate but here are my thoughts. Their could be a sense of arrogance and ego on their behalf to show that their names are so heavy that they could literally drop a project and go platinum. Now if that's not a blatant showing to their competition of how great they are I don't know what is. This type of action proves that they are aware of the type of power they have as artists and that they know that there aren't many other artists out there that are on their level. But in a way one could argue that by not having the typical marketing campaign they were still partaking in the art of marketing. Could this have just been a campaign that was simply a "rage against the machine", with no pun intended. 

Or was this something bigger. Were these artists trying to take a stand against "the corporation", (yes I have seen the BBC and Sway In The Morning interview with Kanye West, fore I realize I do not have the answers) by saying that they didn't need their power promotion or resources anymore. That their names now were more relevant than whatever label was packaging and distributing their material. If so, could this be an unorthodox but intelligent step to ridding away with the controlling system flow of the music industry? I guess only time can tell just exactly if this is so, but I'm interested to see what you would think. Feel free to DROP YOUR BARS!