Are Fans So Mad At Frank Ocean They Won’t Listen To His New Album? Probably Not.
Frank Ocean has kept us dangling far too long now.
It has been more than four years since channel ORANGE, and rumors of an imminent masterpiece follow-up have been circulating for almost as long. Tensions were heightened this week when an Apple Music-sponsored live stream popped up on Ocean’s website. The internet responded, as the internet is wont to do, with a frenzy. It’s coming! It’s here! He’s sawing! Something is happening!
But the broadcast has now been live for five days, and still, no album. Fans are getting (understandably) impatient.
Ocean knows precisely what he’s doing; a punch card littered with missed deadlines for Boys Don’t Cry is his unapologetic admission of guilt. The cryptic release strategy has caused his numbers to spike across pretty much every platform. According to analytics provider Next Big Sound, on Monday he saw a near doubling of what could be considered normal activity for Pandora station adds and video views on both YouTube and Vevo — this without actually releasing a single note of new music.
As for social activity, page views on Wikipedia are up more than 300% this week, and the number of people talking about him on Facebook has tripled (note that Ocean has no official Twitter or Instagram account). And yesterday (Aug. 4) Ocean was a top trending search on Google, at more than half a million searches. In other words, Ocean finds himself smack dab in the spotlight, and the topic of every article. Where else would you want to be when your long-awaited album finally does drop?
There are a few reasons for why this tactic is a killer move by Ocean and his team. The branding of the live stream indicates that the album will be an Apple Music exclusive, a strategy that is often considered more valuable to the service than the artist. What is more, Ocean hasn’t been in cycle for years, and the flurry of free press is more than his promo team could hope for.
Lastly, after the long wait there is a bunch of pressure on Ocean to deliver a killer album. This way there will be so much pent up suspense that fans are likely eager enough to buy the album before they have time to check whether it lives up to expectations or not.
We’ll just have to wait and see says Frank. He won’t be rushed into anything.
Originally published at www.forbes.com on Aug 5, 2016.
