Ye is actually spittin now..

What’s poppin y’all,

In between all the beyond shock jock behavior Kanye West—also known as Ye—has been putting out the past couple of days, he actually dropped a lot of sense in a recent video clip. I’m going to do a full video breaking this down later, but I wanted to get this out to you guys first because if you’re reading this, you’re already more in tune with these kinds of conversations.

Ye talked about how he doesn’t like the way numbers are displayed on streaming platforms. A great example of this is Bully, which he released on Twitter, partially because he likely couldn’t get a lot of samples cleared after his recent outbursts. He liked that he put it out there because people couldn’t judge the numbers, and we’ve already seen people trying to throw up random YouTube accounts saying it only got a couple hundred views.

He makes a solid point because in the clip, he breaks down how artists and their teams often spend more money on marketing and pushing an album than the album itself will actually generate in the first week—or even in the weeks after. If an artist “flopping” is a concern, labels will do whatever it takes to make sure they push 100k first week, which in today’s landscape is a monumental number. But the reality is, they probably spent $1 million to $1.5 million to achieve that.

Some might think, “Well, that means the album made $1 million first week.” Not exactly. Features cost money. Sample clearances cost money. Producers cost money. Just making the album alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. On top of that, you have travel expenses, engineer fees, studio session costs—it all adds up. So before the album even drops, the artist is already in the red. And because music doesn’t generate that much money, they’re stuck in debt. But does the label care? Not really. Their goal is to maintain the artist’s perceived status.

If an artist flops publicly, it damages their brand, which in hip-hop is everything. Branding and image matter in every genre, but in rap, it’s weighted even heavier. If numbers weren’t visible, people would just find a different way to gauge success—whether it’s social conversations, cultural impact, or media buzz. But Ye’s take removes this obsessive chase for numbers.

Ye’s looking at it from a product perspective. He’s been selling products for a long time. His music generates revenue, but to get rich, he had to pivot. And that’s exactly what he did. Take Donda 2, for example. That rollout was a mess—it never really dropped. But Ye sold it with the Stem Player and made over $10 million. To generate that same amount of money through streaming, he would have needed billions of streams. That’s years—maybe even a decade—of waiting for payouts.

That right there is a perfect example of where Ye’s mind is at. Most artists don’t think that way, and to be honest, most fans don’t care. But it’s an important take. And like we’ve talked about before, when the music money dries up, artists are left with two options: go on tour (if they can even sell tickets) or do club appearances just to keep the cycle going.

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