“Where will the music industry be in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years?” Taylor Swift writes for The Wall Street Journal. “Before I tell you my thoughts on the matter, you should know that you’re reading the opinion of an enthusiastic optimist: one of the few living souls in the music industry who still believes that the music industry is not dying… it’s just coming alive.”
“I’d like to point out that people are still buying albums, but now they’re buying just a few of them. They are buying only the ones that hit them like an arrow through the heart or have made them feel strong or allowed them to feel like they really aren’t alone in feeling so alone,” Swift writes. “It isn’t as easy today as it was 20 years ago to have a multiplatinum-selling album, and as artists, that should challenge and motivate us.”
“There are a few things I have witnessed becoming obsolete in the past few years, the first being autographs. I haven’t been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera,” Swift writes. “The only memento ‘kids these days’ want is a selfie.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: Cult of Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
She has some surprisingly interesting observations. I know, you’re thinking, “Taylor Swift?” I did too, but check the article out. She’s actually put quality thought into how her world of entertainment, music, and celebrity is effected by the changing landscape of technology. The fact that the celebrity selfie killed the autograph is just one example.
Why surprisingly?
Probably because this level of thinking is so far beyond what the music industry’s senior leadership is capable of : )
On Point!
Once the current befuddled and bumbling 20th century executive thinkers ruining the music industry retire and die off, I fully expect another music renaissance.
Die RIAA. Die.
all i want is a selfie of her sitting on my crotch
You may have a belly, a neck beard and spend a lot of time in your workshop (aka your mothers basement), but I’m doubtful anyone will be sitting on any part of you, anytime soon.
What’s wrong with you dude? I’d let her sit on my face!
Very insightful.
I’ve never thought she was stupid. Perhaps a little crazy maybe weird but not stupid. Good insight
Something all artists must have in some small measure to actually be artists.
Reading Taylor Swift is apparently way less irritating than listening to Taylor Swift.
Who’s Taylor Swift?
What’s DuckDuckGoo or Bing or Google? Ever heard of a search engine?
in 20 or 30 years…..Taylor who?
Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig Von Beethoven, John Winston Lennon, George Gershwin, Giocahino Rossini, Taylor Swift…
which name does not belong with the others?
Well, Taylor Swift is still alive.
Seriously, kind of a dick move. There are hundreds of artists that have written the soundtracks to our lives who don’t belong on the list for the reasons you really mean. Personally, I’d rather not have to wait 50 to 100 years for something to listen to.
“the soundtracks to our lives…” is this your Steel Magnolias impression?
Good catch !
Ludwug Rossini.
Botvinnik
Thank you for including the mischievous Rossini.
I once had a professor who defined the ‘3 Bs’ as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, Bartók and Bruckner.
I’d always add in Biber. (No, not Bieber! Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber!) He’s my favorite of the early baroque composers, another mischievous fellow. Then there’s Bizet, Boridin, Buxtehude, Byrd, Bliss, Bellini…. I’ll stop now. 😉
…I had just gotten left the barber shop when the Lone Ranger gave me a ride home.
jeez, I wish MDN would add an edit function. “I had just left the barber shop…”
😉
Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor is about my favorite piece to play on piano. (Melody used for Stranger In Paradise, the popular song.)
I’ve never heard a piano rendition. They were an early fave of mine as a kid devoted to classical. Recently here in the USA PBS broadcast a revived, modernized rendition of ‘Prince Igor’ by the NY Metropolitan Opera. I was (mostly) entranced to hear the entire score while being able to watch the stage production. That’s what opera is for: Seeing AND hearing! Thus the name ‘opera’.
BTW: Much as I respect Ravel’s colorful orchestration, I very much prefer the original piano version of Mussorgsky’s ‘Picture at an Exhibition.’ I’m a piano fanatic.
Hey, at least she writes her own songs. Granted, most of them are about why she broke up with her latest boyfriend, but still…
——RM
I have to agree with you, like her music or not, I have way more respect for singer/songwriters than those who just spit out auto tuned crap from songwriting mills.
“Before I tell you my thoughts on the matter…”
/closes browser window
While I’ve never been bothered about getting an artists autograph in a little book, or on scraps of paper, I’ve got a lot of CD’s and set-lists signed by the artists, which mean a lot more to me, and, I suspect, the artists.
You can’t sign a download, and bringing along a CD-R with tracks burned on is taking the piss.
Now what is needed so selfie’s become as sought after as autographs is a highly encrypted nfc module the celebrity wears that emits a code that gets added to the picture so the selfie is self-documenting as the genuine article not a photoshop or look alike.
For sufficiently small values of “needed”, of course.
Obvious cheap attempt to get some hits try to benefit from the apple swift search which is very popular right now. Seriously what does she know about what it was like 20 years ago. Marketers fabricated the whole thing for her.
I am only in my 40’s but know more about world war 2 than most. The beauty of history is it’s history. If you want to know what’s happened the last 20 or 100 years in music anyone can research and provide a fresh take in their own thoughts. You should try it. I also recommend you RTA.
If the music industry wants to recover its olden-day profits it needs to do two things:
1. Don’t licence your songs for streaming services
2. Don’t licence your songs for radio
Both these ‘free’ services are killing their profits.
Stupid comment. Radio has been a partner with artists for almost a hundred years. It’s a regular revenue stream and it promotes new music, old music, favorite hits, etc. over and over and over again. With how much time we spend in our cars, cutting off radio (and streaming services) would be killing the golden goose.
HolyMackerel: I entirely disagree. It’s because of the RIAA’s hatred of streaming and radio and subsequent strangling of both that the music industry is delivering bullet wounds to their own heads. There’s nothing ‘free’ about either service, BTW, to anyone. The services pay licensing fees. The customers pay loss-of-time-listening-to-marketing-promotions fees.
The new, improved, 21st century music industry will use every method of music exposure available to provide potential customers with opportunities to learn a vast variety of new, high quality music and provide them with several quick and easy methods of buying it in superior, top notch audio quality of not less than 96KHz, 24bit.
The sooner the old gaurd of the media industry is dead and gone, the better. Watch piracy plummet once the media industry discovers the value of valuing their customers. It will be stunning.
And no, I won’t be arguing the topic. Sorry. I’ll just be watching it happen.
One more…
3. And don’t place your music videos on YouTube.
Just hide your media away and never let anyone hear it or see it unless they pay an exorbitant entry fee. Then gouge them for the luxury of actually owning mediocre quality copies of the media.
NOT brilliant. NOT the future. NOT interested.
4. Do not digitize your music, contract solely with Edison Vitaphone for all your wax paper recording requirements.
It sounds like the celebrity autograph of today will be pretty rare & valuable in 20-30 years.
Or – The Pawn Stars of the future will be trying to explain to the seller that throwing up the peace sign drops the value of the selfie from a possible $2.00 down to $0.25.
Awwww she hasn’t had anyone ask for her autograph for ages…
Err maybe if you were famous or actually wrote decent music people just maybe will want your autograph – one day.
Fascinating, I read the whole article, searched for the word “kill” in it, but nowhere to be found, except in the big bright blue letter of the MDN headline.
Here we have this artist, songwriter talking about the future of music and the headline contains oh my goodness the word “love”. I bet the NSA will be all over that one. Can’t have that, certainly not in a headline and certain not at MDN.
Of the entire article the only mention of anything Apple is a singular sentence, “I haven’t been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera.”
It’s not that much longer than MDN’s headline.
Thanks MDN, for revamping the original headline and making the MDN headline be all about kill kill kill, your contribution helps show everyone what makes Amurderca the fifth rate, wannabe terrorist nation it has become today.
MDN’s been taking headline-writing classes from the Huffington Post. It’s been a clear shift.
It shows, sure is a lot of headline killing going on, must be a killing spree. I hope no one points out that an “Apple iPhone brings life to the selfie” through the statement in the article: “The only memento “kids these days” want is a selfie.” as that would be so very unpatriotic.
Higo: Same impression here. Hit-whoring? You decide.
I never got over the break up of a The Ruttles. 😭
At Least she can’t complain about the pay scale of musicians today.
From Forbes: $55 million last year and $53 million in 2012. Whew! All in all, Taylor Swift’s net worth is around $200 million. (She’s only 24 years old)
Eric Clapton Net Worth – $115 Million
Ozzy Osbourne Net Worth – $90 Million
Bob Dylan Net Worth – $80 Million
Brian Wilson Net Worth – $75 Million
Taylor Swift’s dad is a money manager, so he has taught her early on how to manage money and run a business. Most artists, particularly the ones in your list, spent their money almost as fast as it came in. Plus, almost none have created anything new in a long, long time.
One other thing that has changed on the red carpet is that it now takes a whole lot longer for each fan to take a picture. In the days of point and shoot film cameras, it took 1/25 of a second to take a picture and that was it done. With digital cameras, people unlock it, get it into the right mode, compose the shot while looking at the screen and even after all that, taking the picture still takes a second or two and of course they need to check it back too. The celeb’s progress along the fans is much slower than it used to be.
The problem for the celeb is that they have to hold that cheesy smile for maybe ten seconds and after a while it looks really false. It’s much easier to smile convincingly for one second than it is for ten seconds.
I always thought a photograph of a fan with someone they admire was so much more valuable than some stupid autograph that would eventually wind up lost in a pile somewhere.
Pennsyltucky White Trash Heroine who lacks talent, ability or allure is going to comment on anything regarding music? Why not someone with some music ability?
Oh that’s right, the Murdoch Street Journal is not to be taken seriously.
Opinions are like A-holes. Everybody has one.
Another great heads up by Fred Mertz 👍🌞