Where will the music industry be in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years?
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.
There are many (many) people who predict the downfall of music sales and
the irrelevancy of the album as an economic entity. I am not one of
them. In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be,
based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of
work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on
their music when it goes out into the marketplace. Piracy, file sharing
and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically,
and every artist has handled this blow differently.
In recent years, you've probably read the articles about major recording
artists who have decided to practically give their music away, for this
promotion or that exclusive deal. My hope for the future, not just in
the music industry, but in every young girl I meet…is that they all
realize their worth and ask for it.
Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are
valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music
should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and
their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is. I hope
they don't underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.
Arrows Through the Heart
In mentioning album sales, 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. 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 always going to be those artists who break through on an
emotional level and end up in people's lives forever. The way I see it,
fans view music the way they view their relationships. Some music is
just for fun, a passing fling (the ones they dance to at clubs and
parties for a month while the song is a huge radio hit, that they will
soon forget they ever danced to). Some songs and albums represent
seasons of our lives, like relationships that we hold dear in our
memories but had their time and place in the past.
However, some artists will be like finding "the one." We will cherish
every album they put out until they retire and we will play their music
for our children and grandchildren. As an artist, this is the dream bond
we hope to establish with our fans. I think the future still holds the
possibility for this kind of bond, the one my father has with the Beach
Boys and the one my mother has with Carly Simon.
I think forming a bond with fans in the future will come in the form of
constantly providing them with the element of surprise. No, I did not
say "shock"; I said "surprise." I believe couples can stay in love for
decades if they just continue to surprise each other, so why can't this
love affair exist between an artist and their fans?
In the YouTube generation we live in, I walked out onstage every night
of my stadium tour last year knowing almost every fan had already seen
the show online. To continue to show them something they had never seen
before, I brought out dozens of special guest performers to sing their
hits with me. My generation was raised being able to flip channels if we
got bored, and we read the last page of the book when we got impatient.
We want to be caught off guard, delighted, left in awe. I hope the next
generation's artists will continue to think of inventive ways of
keeping their audiences on their toes, as challenging as that might be.
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.
The only memento "kids these days" want is a selfie. It's part of the
new currency, which seems to be "how may followers you have on
Instagram."
Fan Power
A friend of mine, who is an actress, told me that when the casting for
her recent movie came down to two actresses, the casting director chose
the actress with more Twitter followers. I see this becoming a trend in
the music industry. For me, this dates back to 2005 when I walked into
my first record-label meetings, explaining to them that I had been
communicating directly with my fans on this new site called Myspace. In
the future, artists will get record deals because they have fans—not the
other way around.
Another theme I see fading into the gray is genre distinction. These
days, nothing great you hear on the radio seems to come from just one
musical influence. The wild, unpredictable fun in making music today is
that anything goes. Pop sounds like hip hop; country sounds like rock;
rock sounds like soul; and folk sounds like country—and to me, that's
incredible progress. I want to make music that reflects all of my
influences, and I think that in the coming decades the idea of genres
will become less of a career-defining path and more of an organizational
tool.
This moment in music is so exciting because the creative avenues an
artist can explore are limitless. In this moment in music, stepping out
of your comfort zone is rewarded, and sonic evolution is not only
accepted…it is celebrated. The only real risk is being too afraid to
take a risk at all.
Celebrity Spotlight
I predict that some things will never change. There will always be an
increasing fixation on the private lives of musicians, especially the
younger ones. Artists who were at their commercial peak in the '70s,
'80s and '90s tell me, "It was never this crazy for us back then!" And I
suspect I'll be saying that same thing to younger artists someday (God
help them). There continues to be a bad girl vs. good girl/clean-cut vs.
sexy debate, and for as long as those labels exist, I just hope there
will be contenders on both sides. Everyone needs someone to relate to.
And as for me? I'll just be sitting back and growing old, watching all
of this happen or not happen, all the while trying to maintain a life
rooted in this same optimism.
And I'd also like a nice garden. |
