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Did The Bieber Mania Surpass Britney Mania?


Blackout2006

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11 hours ago, asitalian12587 said:

i dont even think it was close. he had a lot of popularity but it was no where near how big britney was at her peak.

:mhm_britney_nodding_yes_mhmm:

 

 

 

To the topic, I think when it comes to this kind of debates, there needs to be some context or perspective at an international level, and not just within the US.

However, there's even more than that, which is kinda unfair, because there's a lot of things to describe the level of popularity that Britney had that cannot be quantified. Albums or single sales don't reflect the true extent of Britney's popularity. There's how many TV channels played her videos, how she slayed every countdown not just on TRL but the equivalents in other countries, and something very important, how many people knew about her, knew about her music and videos, and actually considered her an artist, whether they liked her or not, since the very beginning and throughout the years. Even the so called "public meltdown" was so big because of how big she was. If she was some random D-list singer, no one would've cared about her antics.

But it's also very difficult to compare her to artists that came out after the Internet and YouTube and social media got so popular. Before the Internet was so generalized, we only had TV and radio, so everyone was exposed to all kinds of artists, we liked them or not, and still, not everyone had enough relevance to prevail in the public's taste or collective memory through the years.

I remember when Bieber came out, at my school, he wasn't more than a joke. The Baby song was popular, but in a meme kind of way, no one took him seriously, and it was also the same in the media (at least from where I am). It wasn't until many years later that people kinda took him seriously. At this point he's famous enough for people to know who he is, but only to a certain age population, and still, those that don't like him will struggle to name or recognize more than a couple of songs from him. With Britney, again, she had detractors since the beginning, but even they knew most of her songs, because she was unavoidable. And it wasn't just they young people that knew her, but adults knew about her too. And even if in the US she wasn't as respected as she deserved, internationally she was and still is considered a true artist in most countries.

The thing is, that will be very difficult to replicate on this day and age. As I've said on other threads, these days everyone chooses what to consume, and is free to avoid anything they aren't interested about (the reason why awards shows and such are so irrelevant now). You can tell me Taylor Swift's latest album or song sold 5M copies or whatever, so what, I haven't heard a song of hers in years, because I don't have to anymore, and like me, there's millions of people that don't care about her or whoever is the #1 at the moment, because again, everyone chooses what to hear and what not to hear. And with streaming plays is even trickier, because of all those views or streams, how many come from the same person that is playing them over and over? But is irrelevant, even if every YT view or Spotify play came from different people, the amount of people that are NOT listening to them is still bigger.

Grab an average person and show them the current Top 20 or Top 50 of their country, or the US, and see how many songs they've actually heard or how many artists they actually recognize from that list, and from those they might know about, how many they can put an image on them, a visual.

I think to some extent the popularity or influence of an artist is better measured not with the amount of followers but with the amount of haters or not necessarily haters, but just people that even though they don't consider themselves fans, still know about a given artist and their music.

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12 hours ago, PokemonSpears said:

:mhm_britney_nodding_yes_mhmm:

 

 

 

To the topic, I think when it comes to this kind of debates, there needs to be some context or perspective at an international level, and not just within the US.

However, there's even more than that, which is kinda unfair, because there's a lot of things to describe the level of popularity that Britney had that cannot be quantified. Albums or single sales don't reflect the true extent of Britney's popularity. There's how many TV channels played her videos, how she slayed every countdown not just on TRL but the equivalents in other countries, and something very important, how many people knew about her, knew about her music and videos, and actually considered her an artist, whether they liked her or not, since the very beginning and throughout the years. Even the so called "public meltdown" was so big because of how big she was. If she was some random D-list singer, no one would've cared about her antics.

But it's also very difficult to compare her to artists that came out after the Internet and YouTube and social media got so popular. Before the Internet was so generalized, we only had TV and radio, so everyone was exposed to all kinds of artists, we liked them or not, and still, not everyone had enough relevance to prevail in the public's taste or collective memory through the years.

I remember when Bieber came out, at my school, he wasn't more than a joke. The Baby song was popular, but in a meme kind of way, no one took him seriously, and it was also the same in the media (at least from where I am). It wasn't until many years later that people kinda took him seriously. At this point he's famous enough for people to know who he is, but only to a certain age population, and still, those that don't like him will struggle to name or recognize more than a couple of songs from him. With Britney, again, she had detractors since the beginning, but even they knew most of her songs, because she was unavoidable. And it wasn't just they young people that knew her, but adults knew about her too. And even if in the US she wasn't as respected as she deserved, internationally she was and still is considered a true artist in most countries.

The thing is, that will be very difficult to replicate on this day and age. As I've said on other threads, these days everyone chooses what to consume, and is free to avoid anything they aren't interested about (the reason why awards shows and such are so irrelevant now). You can tell me Taylor Swift's latest album or song sold 5M copies or whatever, so what, I haven't heard a song of hers in years, because I don't have to anymore, and like me, there's millions of people that don't care about her or whoever is the #1 at the moment, because again, everyone chooses what to hear and what not to hear. And with streaming plays is even trickier, because of all those views or streams, how many come from the same person that is playing them over and over? But is irrelevant, even if every YT view or Spotify play came from different people, the amount of people that are NOT listening to them is still bigger.

Grab an average person and show them the current Top 20 or Top 50 of their country, or the US, and see how many songs they've actually heard or how many artists they actually recognize from that list, and from those they might know about, how many they can put an image on them, a visual.

I think to some extent the popularity or influence of an artist is better measured not with the amount of followers but with the amount of haters or not necessarily haters, but just people that even though they don't consider themselves fans, still know about a given artist and their music.

And even just simplifying things, and this isn't a knock on Justin's popularity at all, but when he "exploded" everything was a lot more digital. I bring that up because once everything was made so readily available online, it pretty much resulted in stars losing their luster because they're basically accessible 24/7, which makes everything a little less special. With Britney, the first part of her career when she was literally everywhere, you could only see her if you tuned into a show, or an interview, or a special that featured her. You had to make sure to tune into TRL to see her video. A concert was the only time you could see her perform a lot of her songs live, unless you decided to purchase the DVD. So she benefitted from having things she put out be a lot more exciting because it wasn't readily available at all times if that makes sense.

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