10 Ways Musicians Piss Off Their Fans
June 19th, 2008
We’ve all come in contact with that drunken guy at the party (hell, perhaps you’ve been that drunken guy) who corners you and makes you listen to a song that’s “changed his life.” Because music has this ability to really affect its listeners, the creators of said music are often worshipped or idolized. This fan worship can often go straight to the musicians’ heads, and can cause them to do things that are considered to be very schmuck-like by their fans. Frankly, these things have the ability to piss us right off and, to put it politely, can make us think uncharitable thoughts. Very uncharitable. Such as the recent incident at the Bonnaroo Music Festival where Kanye West didn’t play his set until 4:45 in the morning, making fans wait 2+ hours! Mmhmm - schmuck-like, indeed. (In response to this, one fan told Kanye to “S my D.”)
So what follows is a list of things that musicians have done that has caused outrage and scorn among listeners and, if you get right down to it, are pretty asshat things to do.
Canceling Shows
Listen, we get that crap happens, and that the odd show cancellation is unavoidable and completely understandable. But, if Kanye West can perform a show ONE WEEK after his mother died, we don’t want to hear any of your hangover/laziness excuses. (I’m looking at you Justin Timberlake. Clearly, the Smirnoff Ice has, once again, proven to be too much for you.) Anyway, if your fans take the time out of their schedules to buy tickets to your show, the profits of which helps support you and your cool rock star lifestyle, and you can’t even bother to show up, well, you can just colour them not pleased.
See also: Avril Lavigne
Refusing to Play Old Hits
There’s a reason that you’re popular, and it’s because you’ve written some songs that make the people’s hearts sing. So, really, most of us don’t care how many times you’ve sung that same old song, if we want to hear Like A Virgin, then dammit Madonna, you best be playing it.
See also: Radiohead - Creep
Letting Record Distributors Conduct Pissing Wars with Your Music
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is content protection software used to lock up digital media. Basically, what this means is that if you buy CDs from certain labels, they won’t work on your iTunes. Instead of stopping pirated copies, it interferes with the legal usage of your purchased music. So, really, although this isn’t technically the artists’ fault, the only losers in the whole scenario are the fans. If we want to have the CD and the mp3 we have to buy the music twice. Screw that noise. Musicians should be putting the kibosh on this whole situation, and figure out a new way to distribute their music so their fans stop getting the short end of the stick (like Pearl Jam did with Ticketmaster…ah love). Thank God the music industry is now offering some DRM-free options.
See: Nickelback
Retiring Over and Over and…Over Again
Often fans pay a lot more money to see a show when they know it’s the “last” tour. If you continue to have a “last” tour every two years, frankly it gets to be a little annoying. It gives the impression of being a tad money-grubbing, and let’s face it, most of the time you aren’t improving your sound at all. (In fact, it might even be on the decline.) Sometimes, it’s a better idea to just put the horse out to pasture. It’s more gentle and quick that way.
See: Celine Dion, Cher, Jay-Z, 50 Cent
Being Extremely Egotistical
Thinking that you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread is fine. Continually reminding anyone who will listen is not. When Noel Gallagher from Oasis said, “With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I’d been born at the same time as John Lennon, I’d have been up there,” I think we all grow a little purple with rage. Granted, Oasis is a good band, but it’s beyond irritating to hear someone say they’d be better than a band they were clearly inspired by.
See also: Kanye West, Axl Rose, P. Diddy, Brandon Flowers
Becoming Wussies
Can I just ask what the hell happened to Aerosmith? I mean, Dream On, Sweet Emotion, Same Old Song and Dance…genius. Then we get Don’t Want to Miss a Thing. What the hell is up with that? Listen - experiment with your sound, do what you got to do to mix it up a little, but don’t become complete and utter wussies. How might you know if you’ve become wussies? When your biggest fan base switches to soccer moms and wedding singers, you just know that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. At that point, fix the situation as it’s become embarrassing for us to watch.
See also: Bon Jovi, Rob Thomas
Ignoring Who Your Fans Are
Nothing pisses your fans off more than when you say or do something that is contrary to some of the cores of their beliefs. For example, whether or not Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks was correct in what she said about George Bush, the fact is that a huge number of her fans were southern, Republican and extremely patriotic. Sooo, of course they were going to get riled up - it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Musicians have just as much right to free speech as anyone else, but if you want to keep your album sales up, you might want to do a little research into the likes and dislikes of your fans.
See also: Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears
Money Grabbing
Everyone should get paid for their work, but there’s no need to be obscene about it. There are some artists that charge ridiculous amounts for tickets to see them in concert (i.e. Barbara Streisand has charged $2,500 for certain shows). Hello? That’s the price of an old car or a mortgage payment or two. There’s really no need to charge that much money for a concert, and it’s a big indicator to fans about where their favourite musicians’ priorities are.
See also: Madonna, Miley Cyrus
Becoming Uselessly Drunk or High Before a Show
As Amy Winehouse has proved time and time again, it’s not a great idea to get so inebriated before a show that you can’t perform. Fans tend to get a little angry when they’ve paid a lot of money to see a show, and the musicians in question makes a fool of themselves on stage. We’re not there to watch a drunken ass grope blindly around the stage, cause if we wanted that we could have gone to any bar and seen that show for free.
See also: Pete Doherty
Be Metallica
If there’s one thing Metallica knows how to do really well, it’s raising the ire of their fans and of music lovers everywhere. Metallica is considered to be mostly responsible for the shutdown of the beloved Napster, and in fact printed out a 60,000 page document of all users sharing their songs. Lars Ulrich became the spokesperson for the RIAA, and frankly, annoyed the crap out of people everywhere. Metallica now plans to sell some of their music on the internet, but it’s not really receiving a very positive response as people have long memories. When it came down to MP3s or Metallica, most people chose MP3s, and they haven’t forgotten that it was Metallica that made them make that choice.
Photographs Courtesy Getty Images
Posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 11:00 am by and is filed under Celebrities & Pop Culture.
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182 Responses to “10 Ways Musicians Piss Off Their Fans”
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Kudos Chris.
To even suggest that an artist should not speak his/her mind is ludicrous. The more people who speak their minds the better, everyone has an opinion! This is one of the fundamental points of a democracy and a capitalist society. You don’t have to agree. A vested individual will seek solace in the collection of these facts, upon which he/she can draw THEIR OWN conclusions. It baffles me how people can behave like sheep!
Article seemed flawed, lacked a solid set of references. Next time try not to write as if it were simply a matter of opinion. If your going to write an article laden with supposed facts, then call up your references to provide some sense of credibility.
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“When it came down to MP3s or Metallica, most people chose MP3s, and they haven’t forgotten that it was Metallica that made them make that choice.”
said the same thing in almost the same words a month back on wired. think a lot of us feel this way when it comes to Metardllica
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The Dixie Chicks did outrage some of their fanbase, but their real problem was “forgetting that most of the commercial radio market is owned by ClearChannel”. It was a ClearChannel business decision to cut them airplay at ALL their stations and not a fan uprising.
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Metallica should shut their pie holes and play music. Respect for them may come back someday.
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Regarding Metallica, the issue has nothing to do with Napster. The problem, as I see it, is putting out crappy music. And Justice For All and before - that stuff defined a genre. And then something happened - perhaps this is the pussification mentioned earlier about Aerosmith. The St. Anger stuff is not only different music when compared to the earlier days, but their attempts to be a new-age garage band by improperly recording the drums was lame at best.
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I’ve heard Eric Clapton is notorious for not playing his hits in concert. Some nights he just plays the blues the entire show without warning and none of his popular songs.
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No one is saying that an artist can’t express their opinion, the point that needs to be understood is that sometimes there a consequences to your actions. Free speech protects a persons right to express themselves, it doesn’t guarantee speech without repercussions. Also, the point is when artists ignore their fans, a lot of people are blindly disagreeing with this article because you believe in what the Dixie Chicks said, don’t get me wrong, the statement was correct and justified, but it went against the grain of their fan base. So quit your whining because you agree with a certain artists opinion, your missing the point altogether.
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The reason most people turned off to the Dixie Chicks was the verbal argument with Toby Keith (practically the biggest country music star and most loved) and the “STFU TK” shirts they wore during a concert.
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What about taking forever to produce new music? Paul Simon is the king of this shitty behavior.
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Neglecting to cite the Rolling Stones in the “money grabbing” category is a pretty glaring oversight.
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Hey I have to agree with what the above poster said about Miley and tickets - usually its the fault of the ticket ’speculators’.
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I like the comments more than the article itself. hehe
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I bought plenty of albums in the 80’s and 90’s that had maybe two decent songs padded by a bunch of crap. I refuse to continue to waste my money like that. If I want to download tracks from a new album to see if it’s worth my hard earned cash, and Metallica thinks that’s a problem, they should launch a campaign to tell all the musicians and their record labels to stop producing SHIT so that consumers will have confidence in purchasing full albums.
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Another one: Put out ONE great album, think because it’s such a hit you’re all Gods, then change your sounds so drastically on the second album that you might as well be a different band. And, in doing all of this, change your stage show from an amazing spectacle of entertainment, creepiness and fun to a boring rehash of the Beatles. Yes, Panic(no more !) at the Disco, I am talking to you.
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Let’s not forget “Put out 12 different greatest hits albums so we don’t have to actually make a new record”. Aerosmith and Iron Maiden are guilty of this. (I forgive Iron Maiden because I love them so.)
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I’m a professional musician and have been for 30 years. It’s difficult to know all the things that go into this career looking from the outside as a fan. Nothing is worse than an egotistical, drunk, or non-showing artist, IMO, but many of the things on this list are just silly. The Dixie Chicks is one example. They landed a lot of new fans (me included) for having the courage to speak out against something they thought was very wrong, and they paid a heavy price. Their ex fans have Toby Keith, Clint Black, and all those other flag draped idiots to worship.
R.e. not playing old hits. An artist working a concert tour has limited resources like any other business. The purpose of concerts for the most part is to introduce new material on current albums, so people will (hopefully) buy those albums. Rehearsing older material takes time and costs them money (sidemen need to get paid for rehearsing). Or we could have nothing but oldies shows if you want.
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Ref. Metallica:
When Metallica started, before it became the monster it is today, what made them grow was the kids that swapped mix tapes with their music, that was their fan base, they received a lot of free advertising from their fans back then, which gave them the leverage to get better deals with record companies.
THen, when they were all grown up and big, they turned right around and spit in their fans faces, calling them thieves and scoundrels.
It seems a wee bit hypochritical to me.
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I think you should have focussed on Axl Rose a bit more. I was at one of the concerts that he walked out on. Talk about some pissed off fans. What’s kind-of funny is that Metallica was awesome that night. But that was when they still made music is instead of whined about DRM.
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Metallica just fucking suks, they will never be who they used be. They actually did sell them selves out to the devil.
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@ Lou: You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Labels do not do any of that stuff.
@Ben: Um, no, “Creep” is not a “fan favorite.” It’s a bland favorite for people who think they are Radiohead “fans” but really don’t know all that much about the band.
Be Metallica is right on. It’s funny how when Metallica were up-and-coming in the ’80s they gave away tapes and encouraged fans to share (ie: copy and give away) their music. Their hypocrisy speaks for itself.
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DID SOME1 SRSLY STAND UP FOR THT HANA MONTANA GIRL!?!?!!?!……either your to young to be bloging and psting out your one of those pervs wiating4 her to turn 18 STFU AND GTFO
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Fuck Lars Ulrich, and fuck Metallica. I haven’t bought any of their music since they became RIAA footsoldiers.
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Yes, because wanting to get PAID for something you create is totally wrong to do. I never understood why people were so offended by Metallica’s opinion in the matter. Would it be okay for 60,000 people to walk into a Best Buy, take a cd, and walk out without paying? Most would say no. But it’s okay to do it in the digital world.
If you believe that Metallica is wrong on the subject of Napster, maybe you should think about what you do for a living and how it would feel if you went through all the hard work to do something for the boss only to be told “Nah. We’re not going to pay you for your work… fuck off!”.
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The whole ‘they sell tickets at high prices so the scalpers cant make $$$’ is a load of crap.
Where I live there is a law against scalping, and it works.. ie scalping literally doesn’t exist. Guess what? Ticket prices are HIGHER than elsewhere.
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How about adding Metallica to becoming wussies? Let’s be honest, they’ve totally sucked since Loand and Re-Load.
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The Metallica one…good call. I used to be a big fan of Metallica’s. After the Napster thing, I agree with Dave…F*ck ‘em all!!
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What is so wrong with paying for music?
If something has value to you, it is worth something. So pay for it! This is so basic.
Metallica was not speaking for only themselves - they were trying to protect all of the little guys out there getting ripped off by people who think that they are entitled to free music.
If you don’t think you should pay for music then you don’t need it. What’s so hard to understand?
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Okay, I find it funny how no one really understands what happened with the Metallica and Napster incident.
Metallica was ‘NOT’ going after their fans because they were downloading their songs using P2P software, it was because while they were recording ‘I Disappear’ for the Mission Impossible 2 movie, someone broke into their studio and stole the finished copy BEFORE it was released.
It then wound up on Napster and THAT was why Metallica was pissed off. Because someone stole a song that wasn’t even released yet. All they wanted was for people to wait until it was released! They even said they didn’t care what people did after the fact; download or buy.
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Wow! How true. Especially the metallica part. I use to worship them in the end of my teen years, then 94-95 hit and they turned into crap, literally. I can’t believe what they did to their music, to their fans, and to themselves, very sad. At least Megadeth is still rocking loud and listening to their fans, And still have long hair!
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I’m just happy that Oasis hasn’t had a hit since 1998. I hope the idiot Gallagher brothers follow their advice and “Don’t look back in anger” =) Peace.
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Whiney little children complaining about actually paying for music. Metallica started their lawsuit after they discovered over 200,000 downloads in only TWO DAYS! MP3’s suck anyway. Compressed music sounds like shit to me. If you can’t tell the difference, your stereo sucks or you have no taste. Try spending a little more on your speakers and you might be suprised.
As for Metallica sucking, 100MILLION album sales says differently. They’ll blow any of these new, whiney ass fluff music bands off any stage. Best live hard rock band EVER!
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The Dixie Chicks should be on the list for being surprised that their fan base didn’t like what was said and then trying to scream censorship like a bunch of whiny idiots. They said what they wanted to, the fans heard it and disagreed by not buying albums/tickets, so everyone just used their rights. The point is, you can’t get a fan base and then insult what they hold dear and expect to have a career anymore.
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First of all, Creep is not a fan favorite of ANY Radiohead fans. It’s barely passable by their standards.
Second of all, I do pay for music, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to shell out cash for ANY crappy-ass record. I would like to at least know what I’m getting into before buying an album that’s a crap sandwich.
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rules, pleasing fans, blahblahblah…that is for classical musicians - rock musicians should never do things for the fans’ sake, should just present the honest truth of who they are at all times - what a whiney, misguided article!
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…charging $55.00 for teeshirt, when in about a month or two find those same shirts for 3.00 at a discount grocery store
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Metallica doesn’t suck, they just piss of their fan.
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with all do respect the list was pretty good, now granite i hate aerosmith but i cant call them wussies straight out, every band has done one or two really girly songs shall i mention last kiss by pearl jam? you look me straight in the eyes and tell me they are wussies but every one has to have one or two,
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saying that an artist should play there hits is a very narrow minded attitude. If the song’s on an album, they’ve already given it to the public to play as much as they want in their spare time. in the same way people are arguing that the Dixie Chicks should be able to say what they want, artists should be free to play what they want, if the fans have something against this they don’t have to support them.
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“they just piss of their fan.” speaking privileges revoked.
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There is one more to add to the list - being bored and going through the motions in your concert. I’m looking at you Dio! Saw him in NY and I was excited becasue I liked him, and he gave a lame, boring show. At one point when we asked for his biggest hit, he mumbled that the song was a f**ckin chain around his neck and did a half-hearted version - worst concert ever.
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@ Cody Gilmore: Your posts amuses me. Don’t try to accuse of someone being young when your post looks like it was written by a 4 year old. Spellcheck, my friend, spellcheck.
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That was a useless list until “be metallica”.
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If you go to a Radiohead concert because you want to hear “Creep,” you’re probably not a Radiohead fan.
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So, guitarbuddy shows us why artists are morons. Hey guy, music is an INDUSTRY and just like any industry, you have a customer base. You’re a commodity that gets traded as easily as soy beans and changed as often as underwear; don’t make it more grandious than it is. We only care about you as long as you give us what we want, which is music.
Not your opinions on politics or why you want to be considered an “artist”. Yeah, no one cares. Shut up and play your guitar or your customer base will replace you, simple as that. Play for us clown, play for us…
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The only one you’re off-base on is the Dixie Chicks. They are following the proud Southern Rebel tradition that includes musicians like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Waylon Jennings, David Allen Coe, and so on. That much of their -presumed- fan base became aware of them on white-washed corporate radio is not their fault and should not be held against them. I doubt Willie Nelson would get much play these days if he wasn’t already an established artist.
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Jesus whats wrong with you all. Metallica, barring St. Anger, is fuckin amazing. They spoke out against illegal downloading, and good for ‘em.
Imagine you go to all this work to create something that is your own. say you paint for a living. And you spend the better part of a month creating this masterpiece. something you could sell for thousands of dollars, and why not? you put an ungodly amount of work into it. then some kid snaps a photo of it, and reproduces it en mass. Giving it away to anyone passing by, who will look at it once, then just kinda toss it to the side. You’re out ALL of that work and ALL of that money, all of your time is wasted… and you just get to start again and hope someone will come along and buy it. Wouldn’t you speak out against that crap?
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Yep. The comments defending Radiohead are quite right. Real Radiohead fans don’t like Creep.
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be metallica is the best on there. spoiled little shitstains. whine, whine, i only made 3 million dollars last year, whine whine, we are so hardcore, whine whine, ride the lightning until i am no longer rich enough to buy everything and everything, whine whine…fucking pussies, nothing else to it.
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You can add Eric Clapton to the list of Drunks on stage. I saw him in Vegas years ago and he was so high on drugs he could barely stand up. The concert was so bad nearly half the audience walked out on him half way through his horrible performance of Layla.
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I can’t believe the single worst thing that can make a singer null and void as an ‘artist’ is by selling their single to be used in every commerical they can!