Madonna’s massive concert in Rio de Janeiro has left a trail of headlines about her enormous success, some controversies by conservative groups as a result of what was broadcast on national television (exactly the same news that could have been published 40 years ago), others because the event was considered a pop frivolity at the same time that the country mourns the 40 dead in the Rio Grande floods do Sul. On social networks, still today, Monday, another story is being experienced: the almost unanimous celebration of the figure of Madonna and her career, with shocking aerial videos in which 1.6 million people (up to 2.5 according to other media) they sing Like a Virgin either Like a Prayer.
It is strange in an environment as contaminated as that of The tour Celebration It has been one of the smartest moves of his career. On the one hand, professionally: in the face of the lukewarm reception of recent musical adventures, he has claimed for the first time his catalog full of classics (his tours have always put the songs from the albums he promoted above the hits). On the other hand, on a personal level: after a serious infection that took her to the ICU last June and almost canceled the tour, Madonna has managed, at 65 years old and with health problems, not to cancel a single one of the tours. the 81 concerts and show on stage an energy and vitality that most mortals consider reserved for someone much younger.
Madonna’s event in Rio de Janeiro must be put into perspective: there have been some (few) musical events that have attracted more audiences, but always in contexts of large celebrations, for example at the end of the year (Rod Stewart brought together more than three million people on New Year’s Eve 1994, also on Copacabana beach), sports celebrations or festivals. Madonna is the only one who, just with her name, has managed to bring together so many people. Many on social networks and in the industry itself wonder if, with this achievement and at 65 years old, the singer will have managed, once again, to be the first in something: in establishing free and massive concerts as the goal of all musical stars, in the mass bath that make them go from idols to legends.
This tour, and especially the macro event in Rio, has also brought to light the difference between what is happening in the world and what is happening on networks like Spotify or Tiktok. The GodnessMadame account published a tweet shared thousands of times on Sunday that has somehow set the tone: “You can have million-dollar debuts on Spotify or you can go viral on TikTok, but nothing can ever compare to having a loyal and gigantic fan base. ”.
You can have big Spotify debuts, you can be viral on tiktok, but NOTHING will ever compare to having a massive loyal fanbase. Madonna proved how legendary her career is once again. pic.twitter.com/Kt7U4zuM2g
— marcus (@GodnessMadame) May 5, 2024
“This is the result of having an impact, not debuts of 300 million views on Spotify [en referencia al gigantesco éxito de Taylor Swift con su último disco]. Leaving a mark on culture, being part of social movements and transcending beyond fashion decade after decade is what makes this happen 40 years later,” wrote another fan of the singer. in a tweet which accumulates 14,000 likes. And it is the question that is in the air in the middle of the concert’s hangover: How is it possible that the numbers of the most successful singer in history on Spotify, the platform that currently measures musical popularity, are meager compared to other artists of great popularity? less relevance and cultural significance?
Madonna doesn’t sound familiar to me
“Madonna doesn’t have as many reproductions as, perhaps, a Cyndi Lauper, because she doesn’t have a label,” summarizes Sebas E. Alonso, director of JenesaispopMadonna fan and author of an interview with the singer in 2019. “Basically he is a person who has been without a record label for 15 years. At the time, his signing for Live Nation was a hit [le reportó, según se publicó entonces, 120 millones de dólares] and he raised a lot of money with his tour MDNA, but it does not have a seal. She had a distribution deal with Universal with fairly regular promotion, but the label was herself. Madonna’s latest albums are practically self-released and Universal couldn’t do much for them, being only a distributor. And Warner has not moved her catalog in series, movies or advertisements for 15 years.” Alonso appeals here to the enormous power of series, especially platforms, to return songs from the eighties or nineties to the top of the charts, a phenomenon whose best example is Kate Bush and Running Up That Hill, used in a key scene Stranger Things. “She had the idea of saying that she didn’t The Leftoversthat they wanted to use Like a Prayer in a piece of karaoke scene that was the climax of the series. She said no. This serves as an example to see to what extent he has stopped playing in series and movies: he has no label, he is on his own and although it was reported that he was returning to Warner to reissue his entire catalogue, that remains untouched. “Madonna does not reissue absolutely anything, unlike other artists who are constantly reissuing.”
The reason why the artist who can fill a gigantic beach does not have particularly brilliant figures on Spotify is, for Alonso, that she is not in playlists. The playlists They are the compilations of hits, current or not, that Spotify itself makes available to the laziest and most casual listeners and in which record labels fight to enter so that their artists have spectacular numbers on the platform. “It appears in playlists from the eighties, yes, but the scope of a song like Like a Prayer It is much lower than that of songs from that era that were much less successful, and that is because the label is not involved in doing their promotions. She is also an artist who polarizes a lot: many people love her, she has been seen in Rio, but many people hate her. And that, in order to get her songs into the main playlists, can cause people to skip the song if Madonna appears. It is another reason why it can have much fewer listens than an innocuous topic that everyone likes, like Girls Just Wanna Have Fun [que tiene más del doble de reproducciones que cualquier canción de Madonna]. “There is not in Cyndi Lauper the element of controversy that always surrounds Madonna.” A clue to the extent to which Spotify is a slightly warped mirror in which to look at the success of a song or an artist is to compare: give me back my girlby Hombres G, surpasses any Madonna song and, in some cases, doubles the number of listens to her biggest hits.
“There is a lot of smoke on Spotify,” continues the director of Jenesaispop. “One thing is the number of listeners that the presence in a playlist powerful and another that that audience goes to see you. There are artists in which both things come together, like Taylor Swift, and others in which they don’t, for example The Weeknd, who has more listeners than Taylor Swift but no way generates the money that she generates in concerts. They are two completely different things and there are some dark points in the platforms of streaming “They’re a little scary, really.” Curiously, The Weeknd has given Madonna her biggest hit in Spotify history with the song Popular, where she only speaks in an intro and sings in a verse. Madonna is neither an artist who has great seasonal success (Mariah Carey becomes the queen of Spotify every Christmas thanks to her Christmas carol) nor someone who, as Alonso points out, draws on her spectacular catalog beyond some recent remixes that have divided to their fans and have not interested a new audience much.
The big question with Madonna is: what will she do after this tour and the event in Rio, which in any career would be considered a magnificent culmination? Nobody believes he is going to retire. Madonna has never liked to sit at home counting her money. Sebas E. Alonso doesn’t believe it either. “She has said actively and passively that she is not going to retire,” he clarifies. “The rumor was that she wanted, by touring, to finance her biographical film, after she and Universal failed to reach an agreement to make it. Madonna is also known to have recorded new music with Max Martin, Honey Dijon and Arca. But it is very strange that she has not released anything taking advantage of the success of the tour. Their thing would be, in reality, that they publish all the reissues that Warner announced and it is incomprehensible that their catalog has not been reissued taking advantage of a greatest hits tour. But, beyond the figures and records, I would emphasize the very good state of creative form where it is and the artistic direction of the concert.”
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