The Dumbing Down Of Taylor Swift

The music of female pop singers, not to mention the pop singers themselves, is so interchangeable these days that it’s difficult to tell them apart. Jesse J, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Demi Levato, Ariana Grande, Rita Ora - unless you’re a 14 year old girl you’d be hard-pressed to identify which is which when played back to back. The last star we expected to fall into this crowd was Taylor Swift, but there she is, dumbed down like the rest of them with her latest release “Shake It Off.”

In a world where the music on the radio increasingly sounds the same, Taylor Swift stood out from the rest. She wrote her own music, and was able to share the details and feelings of her life in a way that was overwhelmingly relatable to her audience. Not only that, she had a personal relationship with that fans that was fairly unique amongst pop stars today. She wrote about the things they cared about, but she was also reachable by social media, just like they were, and had the most amazing and enduring quality that any music star could hope for - she was her audience.

It’s fair to say that the measure of an artist isn’t necessarily their singing or musical ability. What really makes an artist into a star and provides for a long career is the ability to write songs, a rule of stardom that virtually every American Idol winner has managed to prove. Of course, songwriting has been Ms. Swift’s strong suit, and she certainly had her hand in “Shake It Off,” as evidenced by the lyrics. Read more on Forbes.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Country Music Acts Make A Lot Of Money Today

There are various studies that indicate that country music is either the most listened to, or the next to most listened to music in the US right now. This must be true given this Statista chart below, where the top 10 country artists made a total of $378 million in 2014 so far, according Forbes. Keep in mind that this doesn't include the summer touring months, which is the most lucrative time of the year for big touring acts.

This is no consolation to acts that aren't in the 1%, as touring is tougher than ever (check out this Wall Street Journal story) as venues of all sorts close. That said, life is sweet if you can make it to the top.


You will find more statistics at Statista

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

What Is Radio's Biggest Music Genre?

OK, quick show of hands? Who thinks that electro-pop is the biggest radio Top 40 genre at the moment? Who thinks hip-hop? How about rock? You're all wrong - according to Nielsen, it's country music.

Country music's audience has grown wider and younger in recent years, and is now poised to dominate the radio airwaves like never before. And it's kicking butt on television as well, with the recent Academy of Country Music Awards receiving its largest viewing audience in 15 years, ABC's prime time Nashville also a hit, and numerous country-oriented reality shows in the works.

One of the reasons for the format's growth is that it has embraced younger artists like Taylor Swift, the Band Perry, and Hunter Hayes more readily than in the past, which has enabled its radio market share to rise dramitically even in the 12 to 15 year old bracket. To put it bluntly, it's no longer the music of 40 year old women like it once was.

While many say that today's country is just 70s rock with fiddle and steel guitar, there's a vibrancy to it that other music doesn't seem to have at the moment. Popular music is all about cycles, and perhaps we've not seen the peak of the this latest country cycle just yet.

Predicting a Country Music Hit

What would you do if you knew the formula for a hit? Would you follow it to the letter to take advantage, or would you do exactly the opposite to stay true to yourself? These are interesting personal questions that luckily we never have to ask ourselves because you can't predict a hit. Or can you?

Musicmetric recently released an interesting whitepaper called "Cracking The Code - Predicting a Country Music Hit" that can look at the sales and social metrics of a country song and reasonably predict if it will be a hit or not within four weeks of debuting on the charts. The research looked at 28 different metrics, including airplay, Shazam tags, Facebook likes, Soundcloud followers, online activity, chart positions, category, sales and other audience metrics. Of the 66 country music tracks that they looked at, 23 went to #1.

They found that the average #1 country single had:

• 3.5 times their usual weekly Facebook likes 
• 2.0 times their usual weekly YouTube plays 
• 1.8 times their usual weekly Twitter Followers 
• 2.0 times their usual weekly BitTorrent downloads 
• took 16.5 weeks from its first entry to its chart peak 

After looking at their model, the researchers found that they could predict with a 79% probability if a song would reach the top 20, 63% if it would the top 10, and 50% if it would go to #1.

While this isn't that helpful for songwriters, it sure is for record labels and publishers. That said, I don't think I'd want my promotional budget hanging on research that has even that much room for error, but it's still the closest we've come to hit prediction yet.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.