Saturday Special 4 5
I am not a Swiftie
Probably on the underside of being a fan
I mean, I can sing along with a ton of her songs
My kids listened to her on the incline of her career taking off
I shook it off a lot
She had a mega best selling tour that churned a lot of money
For local economies, for her, and for the music industry
But…
I learned something new
Here’s an interesting factoid about the music industry:
Most “successful” artists, like Taylor Swift, and Justin Bieber have a 20–30% success rate
Tay-tay, as my kids liked to call her, had 59 HIT songs
Out of 243 released
That’s a 24% “success” rate.
Now her success is millions and millions of bucks, plus merchandise, plus a percentage of ticket sales and brand deals based on that 24% success
Still, it seems weird that someone who is successful by all definitions except one, has so many at bats
Her one exception?
Love. Tay-tay Swift so far, has not been as lucky in love as some people in life
Or maybe she has
She has learned, through her adult dating life, what she likes, what she doesn’t like, and has landed with a dude that may carry her into her 40’s and later
Maybe
That success will be determined later, but for now, she’s batting 25% in the hit songs department
Bieber?
He’s got 85 hits out of 285 songs, a solid 30%.
I think it might have to do with his breaking out on Youtube first, which gave him a larger global audience and access to more pre-teens
How about Drake?
38 out of 133, which seems high, but is still only 28%
A lot of at bats
A lot of hits
Still, it seems like the industry average carries across decades
Remember putting an album on the stereo and getting all tingly about the B sides that no one else knows?
Or slipping a cassette into the dash and fast forwarding through the other songs you don’t know or don’t want to hear
It was rare for an album to have more than one or two hit songs that got radio play or rotation on MTV
Because so many albums were released in a year, and everyone wanted or got a little bit of air time, and requests to the top 40 pushed them further and further up the charts
Hell, even Jimmy Buffet shared the truth
“I don’t wanna hear the shit in the middle of that album, I wanna hear that one song!”
Hit makers was a term coined for influential DJ’s who broke new artists, or new songs and turned them into earworms folks couldn’t escape
And still, the 20–30% rule was in effect
Which brings me to trying new ways of doing old things
No one is 100% successful at all things
A 50% success rate is a stand out performance
Stephen King puts out a big book, and a couple of novellas a year, but over a 50 year career, especially when he was starting out, he put out books under pen names, novellas across multiple magazines, and more
All in an effort to find what worked best
For him. For his audience(s)
Industries change.
They evolve, and with it, so do habits.
I could use music to show how you bought 45’s, and albums, and then 8-tracks, then cassettes, then CD’s, and then digital downloads, and now streaming.
Or physical books and magazines turned to ebooks on your phone, tablet or even computer screen
In ten years, you will stare at the face of your robot and read books in their eyes, and fall in love with the image of what you are building in your mind
Or whisper play a love song, and listen as the voice of Taylor Swift or Justin Bieberas it sings back to you through stereo speakers where the mouth is supposed to be
There’s a 20 to 30% chance it could happen
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