Morgan Wallen: Nowhere To Be Heard, But Album Sales Soar

This past weekend, Country Music artist Morgan Wallen was caught on camera by a neighbor’s Ring camera, using a racial slur outside his home in the Berry Hill area of Nashville. 

The L-A Times reports the video was leaked to TMZ and there have been consequences.

In less than 24 hours Wallen’s music was pulled from rotation by radio conglomerates iHeartMedia, Cumulus, Cox Media Group, Entercom and Beasley Broadcasting — a major blow to any artist, but particularly for country artists, who are dependent on the support of country radio. 

His label, Big Loud, suspended his record contract. Cable network CMT is “in the process of removing his appearances from all our platforms,” as is the Country Music Assn. His songs have been removed from curated streaming playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, though his music remains available on the platforms. The Academy of Country Music halted his eligibility for awards and “will expedite the offering of long-planned diversity training resources.” 

And Billboard reports that his booking agent, WME, has dropped him from its roster.

However, Digital Music News reports a quick scan of Spotify’s top 100-streamed tracks reveals actual increases for Wallen’s music. A total of 15 of Wallen’s songs from various albums rank in Spotify’s top 100 tracks, with ‘Wasted On You,” “Sand In My Boots,” and “Somebody’s Problem” all ranking among the 20 most-streamed songs on the platform on Wednesday, February 3rd.

Each of those tracks garnered more than 500,000 plays on Wednesday, with only the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, SZA, and other pop superstars edging Wallen out in total plays.

In total, a just-released tally from MRC data shows a 339% increase in total song and album sales over the previous day, with more than 22,500 aggregated sales on Wednesday alone.

Morgan Wallen

Those above-referenced songs are just three tracks out of 15 in Spotify’s top 100 alone, with Wallen’s chart positions likely to rise over the coming days. “Wasted On You,” for example, was played more than 561,000 times over the past day, up more than 11% from the weekend. The staying power is even more surprising given that Wallen is nowhere to be found on mega-playlists like Hot Country, which boasts more than 6 million followers.  

That means Wallen isn’t getting many accidental or background listens, but rather more active on-demand plays according to Digital Music News.

But perhaps the more surprising story surrounds Wallen’s recently-released Dangerous: The Double Album. 

Also according to MRC Data, sales of the double album (which includes streaming, downloads, and physical purchases), jumped more than 500% (i.e., 6 times) on Wednesday. In total, Wallen sold more than 7,000 copies on February 3rd, up 511% over sales generated on February 2nd.  The album itself was released on January 8th. Those sales figures include aggregated streams of songs contained on the album, a bulk of which come from platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube.