Taylor Swift on the Music Industry: "It's Not Dying...It's Just Coming Alive"

Taylor Swift has written an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal on why there is still hope for the music industry.

In the article, the superstar notes that piracy and file-sharing have indeed contributed to a decrease in physical music sales but believes that music is still valuable and should be paid for.

“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,” she wrote.

“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.”

Taylor touches on that music fans aren’t purchasing as many albums as they did in past years. But this shouldn’t discourage artists, she says. “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,” the singer wrote. She believes that fans view music the same way they do their personal 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),” Swift wrote. “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."

The singer also feels that artists need to form a strong bond with their fans by regularly offering an “element of surprise.” This is especially important because of the “YouTube generation we live in,” which was “raised being able to flip channels if we got bored, and we read the last page of the book when we got impatient,” she wrote, later noting that fans now ask for selfies instead of autographs.