The Weeknd Thread ( "The Dawn FM" OUT NOW)

[tuff g0ng]

I'm prepared to throw "XO/The Host" up there with the likes of "Part/After Party" and "Gone".  "XO" is on some other ##++ and then the seamless transition...

Advance towards me, brethren.

 

[awwsome]

I'm with you g, XO just goes too hard.

When the guitar riffs come in...ball game.

"But if they don't let you in....you know where to find me"

 

[dead stokc]

XO is my have track off EOS. Cant stop playing it.
Right now I feel like HOB=Thurs=EOS, Im just taking
it all in. Cant rank one over the other. Just a consistent
great body of work.

 

[Maximus Meridius]

Originally Posted by joshyy1834

What if when he re-releases the trilogy, he disappears?

EOS > HOB >>> THURS (EOS edging HOB because of Loft Music)

EOS is unskippable

Timeout, you skip Loft Music???

 

[scotthallwithapick]

Yeah I'm not getting the Loft Music slander in here. That song made me a Weeknd fan

 

[niquefreak94]

Originally Posted by ScottHallWithAPick

Yeah I'm not getting the Loft Music slander in here. That song made me a Weeknd fan

this. it was the first song i heard from him. 

 

[luckyluchiano]

man I can see his song writing talent, but I couldn't listen to his music, stopped half way through House of Balloons cause everything sounds the same. Dude sounds like a darker emo The Dream. I`ll stick with Dream.

 

[leclutchjames]

You should go back finish house of balloons, then Thursday and then echoesssss

 

[illoquent aka dsk]

Originally Posted by ScottHallWithAPick

Yeah I'm not getting the Loft Music slander in here. That song made me a Weeknd fan

I understand.

I went from not caring at all about Loft Music to now having it in my top 5 Weeknd tracks. I can't even explain in words what makes it good...it just is. Everything about it, even the wailing and !%!*.

Took a while but it grew on me like a mother **!@%@.

Originally Posted by Tuff G0ng

I'm prepared to throw "XO/The Host" up there with the likes of "Part/After Party" and "Gone".  "XO" is on some other ##++ and then the seamless transition...

Advance towards me, brethren.

IDK yet fam. Gotta give it more time. I will say though that Party & After Party + Gone made a crazy 1st impression on me and stood out from the jump. I didn't get that sense from any EoS tracks but that doesn't take anything away from how great the project was.

 

[lbj23navo]

 @ the reaction video 

 

[BigDanes89]

Just got put on to their mixtapes and I must say very refreshing to my ears, especially Hi.

 

 

[All Ready]

same ol song just touches the soul

that crack

 

[osh kosh bosh]

"That two floor loft in the middle of the city"

That part makes me want swallow and handful of what ever pills I can find...

 

[lebrady23]

Originally Posted by Checks McGee

Originally Posted by SpeakUp23

lebrady23 wrote:

---

I know it won't happen but for some reason with the trilogy complete I could see Abel just completely disappearing and us never hearing from him again...

Dopest SN ever

But yea, I thought about that too.

and then the prequels release years later on some Star Wars $**$

speakup- appreciate it my dad just called me that one time cause I'm such a big bron fan haha
and mannnn he could go back before all this like a young Anakin so before he was poppin and all that..and his content would be about that girl that first hurt him but in a good way.....

 

[checks mcgee]

Originally Posted by LuckyLuchiano

man I can see his song writing talent, but I couldn't listen to his music, stopped half way through House of Balloons cause everything sounds the same. Dude sounds like a darker emo The Dream. I`ll stick with Dream.

see, thats how I felt.  but after a few listens it just grows and grows on you.  idk how to explain it any further than that...

 

[jking0821]

Originally Posted by Checks McGee

Originally Posted by LuckyLuchiano

man I can see his song writing talent, but I couldn't listen to his music, stopped half way through House of Balloons cause everything sounds the same. Dude sounds like a darker emo The Dream. I`ll stick with Dream.

see, thats how I felt.  but after a few listens it just grows and grows on you.  idk how to explain it any further than that...

QFT

I remember when i first saw this thread.  The first song i heard from them was "What you need".  I was like ehhh too slow and emo for me.  And then i heard High For This and it was a wrap.  Became attached and am now a weeknd stan lol.  And now "What you need" is one of my fav tracks he ever made.

 

[tillmatic]

Originally Posted by All Ready

same ol song just touches the soul

that crack

This.

 

[da doc03]

you're the saaaaaaaaameeeee olllllllleee sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggggg


this #++* is just too real

 

[jordanfan04]

And now I'm poppiiiiiiiin. Ain't nobody showed me hoooooooow. I made it big POPPIIIIIN. Tell me how you like me nooooooow?!


This tape has grown on me overnight like Bey's belly.

 

[solefood229]

I listened this $*%* high for the first time last night and oh my god,

Next had me zoned the *$$@ out, the voice of Thursday really stuck out to me


"Don't make me smoke up all your kush, pop your cheap #%% pilllllls "

 

[henz0]

Next is the hardest track on EOS

 

[cj863]

Originally Posted by Tuff G0ng

I'm prepared to throw "XO/The Host" up there with the likes of "Part/After Party" and "Gone".  "XO" is on some other ##++ and then the seamless transition...

Advance towards me, brethren.

Agreed, I'm trying to wean myself off of EOS in hopes that it doesn't get old too soon, I've been playing it nonstop since he dropped it 

 

[jordanfan04]

Originally Posted by CJ863

Originally Posted by Tuff G0ng

I'm prepared to throw "XO/The Host" up there with the likes of "Part/After Party" and "Gone".  "XO" is on some other ##++ and then the seamless transition...

Advance towards me, brethren.

Agreed, I'm trying to wean myself off of EOS in hopes that it doesn't get old too soon, I've been playing it nonstop since he dropped it 

The thing about dudes music is that none of his tapes have gotten old to me. If anything, I find another song that sticks out more to me.

 

[flightman]

Originally Posted by CJ863

Originally Posted by Tuff G0ng

I'm prepared to throw "XO/The Host" up there with the likes of "Part/After Party" and "Gone".  "XO" is on some other ##++ and then the seamless transition...

Advance towards me, brethren.

Agreed, I'm trying to wean myself off of EOS in hopes that it doesn't get old too soon, I've been playing it nonstop since he dropped it 

 

[maldonado]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/dec/29/the-weekndfree-music-model?newsfeed=true


[h1]The Weeknd finds lucrative career path – without ever selling a record[/h1]
Abel Tesfaye gives away his music for free, but has still found overwhelming success. Is this the future of the music industry?

• • 

The Weeknd: buzzy, downbeat R&B. Photograph: Clinton Gilders/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Christmas came a few days early for fans of the buzzy, downbeat R&B act The Weeknd, the stage name of Canadian singer Abel Tesfaye: his newest album, Echoes of Silence, became available for download from his website free of charge on 21 December.

Then again, Christmas also came in August, when The Weeknd released his second album, Thursday, via complimentary download, and before that in March, when trendspotters were able to snatch up his debut, House of Balloons, also gratis. Balloons, with its sensual, druggy soul slow jams, landed on the 2011 top ten lists of a host of publications, including the New York Times, Billboard and the Guardian, and was shortlisted for 2011's Polaris Music Prize. It's been a banner year for The Weeknd – in terms of cachet and critical acclaim – and one that proves that sometimes there is such thing as a free lunch.

The Weeknd's rapid ascendance demonstrates how drastically the approach to disseminate music and building an audience has changed in the first decade of the 21st century. The sea change has been so dramatic that it's easy to forget it was only 10 years ago that Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was testifying before Congress, explaining the band's decision to sue the game-changing, peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster. "It is clear, then, that if music is free for downloading, the music industry is not viable," Ulrich testified in July of 2000. "The argument that music should be free must then mean the musicians should work for free. Nobody else works for free. Why should musicians?"

Even then, Ulrich's argument sounded like one that would seem fusty in 10 years, and while no one is arguing that musicians should work for free, The Weeknd's approach is proof that musicians are increasingly accepting the idea that albums, even great ones, are a means to an end. In 2007, Radiohead released In Rainbows via a voluntary donation system in which fans and bandwagon-jumpers alike could download the album for as much or as little as they saw fit. The Weeknd's model is the next step in that evolution. Instead of devaluing the product, offering the music for free has lent it an aura of reverse prestige. It's the album equivalent of a trendy nightclub with no sign outside. Or perhaps a better comparison would be the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, both of which grew out of the idea that providing a unique, valuable end-user experience should always be the primary focus. Figuring out how to monetize that experience comes later.

The Weeknd has clearly figured out the end-user experience part – so many people rushed to download Echoes of Silence that the server crashed – but he's yet to figure out how to turn the demand he's created into a windfall. Tesfaye is emphatically press-shy (he has yet to grant a major interview and did not respond to a request from the Guardian) and has played so few shows you could count them on two hands and still have enough fingers left over to eat with chopsticks. In an interview with Billboard, music executive Marc Geiger claimed The Weeknd was flooded with offers from labels within the week of the Balloons release, as well as a $25,000 offer to play one show. The Weeknd has placed himself in the precarious position of having to figure out how to sell his cachet without forfeiting it, but there does appear to be a path to a lucrative music career without ever selling a record.

If 2011 was the year of The Weeknd, 2012 could be the year of the Weeknd model. At the end of the summer, singer-songwriter-producer The-Dream released 1977, a full-length, free download album under his birth name Terius Nash. Kanye West offered up free tracks in the build-up to the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as did Drake, to drum up anticipation for Take Care. (Not incidentally, Drake, a fellow Canadian, was one of The Weeknd's earliest co-signers, and collaborated with him on four of Take Care's tracks.)

By now it's been demonstrated that offering up free music isn't just a marketing ploy for an already massive artist or a way to say thank you to fans. When executed correctly, giving music – even entire albums – away free is a way to build a savvy, pacesetting audience from the ground up, an audience that will spread the gospel via social networking platforms. In other words, everybody's working for The Weeknd, and when Tesfaye decides to shed his reclusive ways (or heaven forbid, charge for his music) he could be sitting on a new-media goldmine. Not unlike Mark Zuckerberg, but with better pipes.