As an artist, if I knew the future of music, would it actually make a difference? If I knew the trends of today years ago, personally it would have made little difference me. I could have been famous, outselling Bieber, but I seem to like to learn things the hard way. But, if I could make a prediction, based on my journeys over the last ten years as an artist, I would say we are going to see a new trend with music having a deeper connection with, not only consumers, but appreciators of art too.
As young children we wander around arms out stretched, touching anything and everything, taking our time to absorb just how big our world operated, in its entirety. We do this because adults have no way of communicating the vast chances of life to us. So throughout out life, we learn by trial and error…feeling out each new space in our lives, and cherishing the little things we accrue throughout.
However, as 20-something-adults, in an ever-digitizing world, our time to cherish anything is limited. The digital content that swirls around us everyday means faster consumption and temporary ownership of everything around us. From this article you’re reading to the next song you’ll download before heading home, we can pick and chose what entertains us, but what can we take away from these experiences?
Songs, photos, letters are things we used make fast tangible attachments to as we went through life; and they were certainly something we loved to share with others. Specifically, sharing music has evolved in our lifetime from cassettes, to CDs, to it now being a flicker of time to plug in an Mp3 player or e-mail your friend a song. The 30-second iTunes previews of a song will make or break if you buy (or steal) that song and share it with your friends. However, there are no tangible assets left behind that we can appreciate and cherish.
No CDs, no cover inserts…nothing.
As an indie musician, my current child-like wanderings are occurring in the realm of making money from my passion of music. I too face the overwhelming digital consumption and production of $0.99 micro-payments and downloads of songs online. As recently as 2 years ago, I completely gave up on trying to share my music as individual downloads, because it simply wasn’t providing the substantial connection I wanted my audience to have. Then, I had no idea how I would make a better connection between my music & my fans — let alone being able to sell the music.
Recently however, I’ve been using UStream as a way to connect with my fans, and hopefully making new buyers of my music. It has been going well, pulling in an audience of a dozen people who live chat as I jam. During one of my UStream shows, as a great guitar riff and adjoining lyrics came to me unannounced. So naturally, I wrote down the lyrics to the song and played through it for my viewers.
Then I thought to myself:
“Why don’t artists, like myself (or a little more popular) live stream some of their recording sessions and sell their actual handwritten notes, lyrics and sheet music to their fans as a piece of art?”
Think about it, how many people would tune into UStream to view Lady GaGa, Kanye, B.o.B or Katy Perry working through their next single, and watch then pen some of the lyrics. This could become a full on “behind the scenes, live access show,” and the end result would not only be a great pop-song, but a tangible piece of work, people could purchase, frame and put up in their homes. They could even throw in a video of the recording session and free Mp3 download with the purchase.
The art of music isn’t about the millions of MP3 copies you sell–the art is within the words and the original, unique hand written lyric document, not available for download on iTunes. Could the hand written lyrics to some of the most famous songs be worth something, for sure!
The only reason I believe they don’t sell for a lot of money is because nobody has tried to create a market for them. Imagine the hand written lyrics to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” framed and auctioned off. Could it go for the same price as a Picasso or Van Gough painting, I think yes.
I mean, if Damien Hirst can sell a pickled shark for millions of dollars, why can’t the one unique element of a song, that has been copied millions of times, be worth a considerable amount of money. Having made some money auctioning off my own hand written lyrics (to my amazement for £185 [$280]) I am going to try this again and see how it pans out.
When I think about it, 10 years ago when I started out making pop music, I would have never guessed that I would end up selling my lyrics as ’art’…but as we keep wandering and testing things out, we realize life can be crazy like that.
Lets see what the next ten years have in store.
The Future of Music: Pop Lyrics as Fine Art
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