That's a bold statement to make about an album that pretty much nobody liked.

Out of curiosity, I went to Spotify to check some numbers.
- Bon Jovi had 15m monthly listeners
- Richie Sambora as a solo artist had 100k monthly listeners
- Orianthi had 240k monthly listeners
- RSO had.... 2k monthly listeners
Since none of these acts has released new music recently, these numbers do not have recency bias.

2k monthly listeners worldwide is absurdly low. This tells me that i) Bon Jovi fans did not like RSO (unsurprisingly, I guess); ii) Richie solo fans did not like RSO; iii) Orianthi fans did not like RSO, and iv) the mainstream/casual audience did not notice or paid attention to RSO.

Are you sure this is about prejudice from Jon's fans and not about that album simply sucking for every segment of the potential and existing audience?

All it really tells us is that most people don't know about RSO. The promotion for the album was pretty much non-existant. There are people out there that love Richie's solo albums, but have no clue that this record even came out. The same can be said for the majority of Bon Jovi fans. Not many post on forums such as this, where the info is readily available...

On Spotify it's listed as "RSO" - no one is going to search for that unless they are specifially looking for it, which they are obviously not doing as they don't know about it (see above). If they had listed it as "RSO (Richie Sambora + Orianthi)" it would have turned up in searches relating to them, and would therefore have resulted in more listens. Just another mistake in the clusterf*** of mistakes they made with this project.

Brilliant points Thinny. They needed to lean harder into their own fan bases. If they were doing it so the project stands on its own it needed to be toured, radio stations promo needed to have happened, so much more needed so the fact that the project was just dropped and then abandoned it tells me something happened but not sure when.

I love how you don't even say "not sure what", because we all pretty much know what probably happened: The honeymoon was over.

Anyway, yeah, I totally agree - RSO's biggest issue is that nobody knew a damn thing about it. I remember people from on HERE having trouble finding the tracks on Spotify. People who were aware of the band and actively wanted to check them out! If that's already an issue, people are not just gonna discover you by accident.

No, I'm not at all sure this is about prejudice from Jon's fans. In fact, I'm pretty sure what I said has nothing to do with Jon or his fans. ;)

The only "prejudice" I had in mind was the kind that causes narrow-minded people to decide, before they hear something, that they aren't going to like it. And that's the same whether you're talking about music from Jon, Richie, Bon Jovi, Ori, or Elvis Presley. Like the people who expected to dislike LH because it was a Nashville-influenced record; or thought THINFS was going to suck because Richie wasn't a part of it; or didn't expect RSO's album to be fit to listen to because AOTL didn't rock hard enough for them, or because they'd decided Richie was a washed-up drunk who couldn't deliver anymore.

Maybe I was wrong in thinking Seb referred to a subset of those people who had expectations, one way or the other; but in response to that, it was the other subset of that group I talking about. Having expectations of any kind, assumes they knew about the album; so most of them probably would fall into groups i, ii, or iii of your analysis.

As others have said, most Spotify listeners probably don't know RSO existed and had no idea an album had even been recorded, which would account for the biggest part of your group iv, as well as most of "the potential and existing audience" outside of Spotify.

All that said, I did just realize that "those who didn't like it" may have been misleading. That could include those who haven't heard it at all, as well as those who don't know or care, or who may have stumbled on it by accident; and I was referring to those who actively disliked it.

You can analyze the numbers all you want but the bottom line is, if something is good, it will create a buzz and people (especially fans) will find out about it... It's not 1985 anymore. Social media is massive and Bon Jovi fans are global so if they had something special, it would have gotten around...

The bottom line is, RSO was absolutely terrible. It offered nothing to fan musically. It's a guy approaching 60 and his 30 year old girlfriend trying to do something so far out in left field, they literally destroyed every target audience they had.

The End! Can we please move on!!!



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I can't fully dispute that. I tend to overstate things online, it's a personal flaw, and I did just that again.

What I really mean is, I was expecting thunderous power chords, screaming guitars and truck loads of finesse in between. Instead, the guitars on the record are just there in the background.

But in the end. It started, it dragged on. It dragged on some more and then something took place. It all ended inflating for what there was to inflate to begin with.

I must agree with RD. It's time to move on and look forward to having reasons to expect Richie's solo stuff. As for me, as a seemingly the only person somewhat liking Ori around here (edit: another overstatement but the point stands), I think that's pretty much all she wrote, as far as her career is concerned. Richie on the other hand is in a position to do what he wants; and he does not owe the World a single thing. As far as one man is concerned, he has done more than his share to make it better.

How can music create a buzz if no one knows about it in the first place? As someone that works in this area, the biggest mistake that an artist can do it rely completely on social media to create a buzz. No it's not 1985 anymore, but many artists underestimate the importance of old school promotional methods. If you are Taylor Swift then sure, a buzz will create itself, yet she still spends millions on promotion. It doesn't matter how good or bad the music is, for a project that's just starting out you need to do the work to let people know that it's happening...

Ok, yeah let's get off the RSO album topic again...

Ron Wikso played drums on Richie's Undiscovered Soul tour. Here's an interview where it talks about Richie from around the 20 minute mark:

https://omny.fm/shows/rock-talk-with...Xmf6dRxYbZvzX0

That's all true... But that's not the reason why the project failed. The project failed because they didn't have a good product.

If you a few others enjoyed RSO, that's cool... I'm not trying to convince you that you shouldn't like it. I'm just giving you the reality as to why RSO failed.

Based on the majority of what I've read here, YouTube comments, other sources and my own opinion, the majority didn't like it. And that's it. They could have promoted the shit out of it and we'd still be here debating some other reason why it failed.

It doesn't matter if you're pro Jon or pro Richie, I think that most Bon Jovi fans knew of the project and most gave it quick listen. Sure there are a few that live under rocks but the majority knew about this project.

Richie was not only trying to target the Taylor Swift audience but turned off every Bon Jovi fan on the planet with that garbage. It was confusing and the music was terrible from start to finish (meaning the writing, the vocals, the production, etc).











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