Ed Sheeran and the Price of Fame: A Theory of Label Control

Ed Sheeran is a prisoner, and this is why. This is Ed.

Ed used to sing to coffee shops, regular people, bars, et cetera, and he would make impact locally as any artist starts out. He starts reaching mass appeal, and those fans turn into super fans, which then turns into data, which then he can use to create bigger shows. But Ed has a problem.

Ed can't do these bigger shows because he's only a guitarist, singer person. He's not a lighting tech, he's not a manager, he's not a showrunner.

He's pretty much not anybody else in his team but the person that's on the stage.

So what does Ed do? We have to remember this was early social media, so it's not like he could have just done it by himself like how most people can do it now.

He had to go to a label. Now, the labels own the data streams, the venues, and now IPs, which is Ed. They tell him, "We'll give you the venues, we'll give you access to all our tools and people, and we'll give you access to other creators in our network, and that will allow you to maximize your own core audience."

But see, what Ed doesn't know is that this isn't free.

Since now Ed is only 10% of the reason why this is working and they are 90% the reason why this is working, they have 90% stake in what he says or does.

So fast-forward, Ed is now doing bigger shows, and he's been doing them for years extremely successfully. But why do these people give a fuck besides money?

Well, these bigger shows allow them to speak to more people.

It allows them to move more people in the directions that they want politically, fiscally, and situationally, also culturally.

So now that Ed is doing the biggest shows of his career, Ed does have a say in a way. It's more like kind of like how, uh, you know, a dog can, like, choose whatever chew toy that they want if the parent is there with them, right? So he chooses his friends,

the openers of his current tour. See, but a couple of his friends don't have as much strings attached to them as Ed does. I mean, they don't make nearly as much money, but they brought them in. Ed unknowingly opened up his platform to people with opposing viewpoints of his handlers.

So when his friends decide to speak about something that the handlers do not like before their main product gets on stage, you're damn right they're gonna have something to say about it. See, but the thing is, the reason why they created Ed is so that these spineless pieces of shit can literally use this kid

to preach their gospel. The money that they wanna put in, they're using Ed as a mascot. That's why we don't know what they fucking talk about, okay?

We know what Ed thinks, right? So he takes the entire brunt of the entire system, okay?

The only reason this guy made it anywhere in life is because of these people. There are millions of talented people busking every single day like how Ed was.

Some of them might even be more talented.

But unfortunately, every contract has a price, and Ed's time was due. And now that we all see what's going on, I hope that these systems allow you to see the bullshit that is being given to us every single day.

Peace.