Avenged Sevenfold bandleader M. Shadows has been known to tweet a polarizing music-related opinion or two, as a treat. This time, the metal vocalist has taken aim at "fan abuse" in the marketing of music — and some Taylor Swift fans took that personally.
Shadows did not refer to Swift by name in his original tweet on Monday (November 7) night, and clarified that she was "literally the furthest thing from [his] mind." But it wasn't an unusual conclusion to jump to considering that Swift is the world's biggest pop star, and her pre-release promotional campaign for Midnights involved little more than a big merch drop coercing fans into buying all four special edition vinyl variants (which form a clock when put together).
"Selling multiple versions, repackages and bundles of your album to the same fan so that you can get a chart position that no one cares about and is manipulated should be called out for what it is…. Fan Abuse," Shadows wrote. He then added, "I'll expand: many options are fine. It's when it becomes: buy the vinyl for ticket discounts… buy the cd version 1 for an extra track. Buy first week 8 track for an exclusive t shirt. Its [sic] all bullshit to make you buy the same shit to pump numbers. Thats [sic] fucked!"
When a fan pointed out that it's been confirmed that Swift would have topped the Billboard charts with her latest release based on streaming numbers alone, Shadows fully agreed that "she deserves it" before making it clear: "I wasnt [sic] even talking about Taylor… literally the furthest thing from my mind."
"We are getting 'options' from our label but its all a cash grab (hence the tweet)," the musician explained, "but dont [sic] you find it strange one fan base is so upset about my tweet which names no one?"
Shadows continued, "I was actually trying to figure out how a bunch of little kids started commenting on my post… and now I see all of taylors fans think I'm talking about her because they all bought multiples of the same album," adding for good measure, "I will not reply to swifties…. Not because its Fan Abuse but because it's Child Abuse." That's also ellipses abuse, my dude.
See the Avenged singer's full series of tweets on the subject of musicians manipulating their fans' wallets below.
Shadows did not refer to Swift by name in his original tweet on Monday (November 7) night, and clarified that she was "literally the furthest thing from [his] mind." But it wasn't an unusual conclusion to jump to considering that Swift is the world's biggest pop star, and her pre-release promotional campaign for Midnights involved little more than a big merch drop coercing fans into buying all four special edition vinyl variants (which form a clock when put together).
"Selling multiple versions, repackages and bundles of your album to the same fan so that you can get a chart position that no one cares about and is manipulated should be called out for what it is…. Fan Abuse," Shadows wrote. He then added, "I'll expand: many options are fine. It's when it becomes: buy the vinyl for ticket discounts… buy the cd version 1 for an extra track. Buy first week 8 track for an exclusive t shirt. Its [sic] all bullshit to make you buy the same shit to pump numbers. Thats [sic] fucked!"
When a fan pointed out that it's been confirmed that Swift would have topped the Billboard charts with her latest release based on streaming numbers alone, Shadows fully agreed that "she deserves it" before making it clear: "I wasnt [sic] even talking about Taylor… literally the furthest thing from my mind."
"We are getting 'options' from our label but its all a cash grab (hence the tweet)," the musician explained, "but dont [sic] you find it strange one fan base is so upset about my tweet which names no one?"
Shadows continued, "I was actually trying to figure out how a bunch of little kids started commenting on my post… and now I see all of taylors fans think I'm talking about her because they all bought multiples of the same album," adding for good measure, "I will not reply to swifties…. Not because its Fan Abuse but because it's Child Abuse." That's also ellipses abuse, my dude.
See the Avenged singer's full series of tweets on the subject of musicians manipulating their fans' wallets below.
