Sunday, November 23, 2008

Lucky For Country, We Can Watch And Learn From How MTV Keeps Up (Or Not?) With Youth

An Economist Profile on MTV head Judy McGrath may offer country music a clue to what the Taylor Swift generation is all about:
"I think the major strategy is that you have to be open and flexible, and probably change it every day."

MTV knows its mainly young audience well, but it is also battling to keep their attention. The people to whom MTV has always appealed are the same people who now spend their time on MySpace and Facebook and watch free video-clips on YouTube. Ms McGrath describes MTV Networks’ main audience as the “on-demand generation”—young people who are used to getting the content they want, whenever they want it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Swift has solidified her position as one of the most important artists to emerge on the popular music scene this decade as her sophomore album, FEARLESS, debuted this week in the #1 slot atop Billboard’s Top 200 Albums Chart, with sales of 592,304 copies in its first week in stores. This is the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music, and the fourth biggest overall, behind Lil Wayne, AC/DC and Coldplay. With 129,046 copies sold digitally, FEARLESS is the biggest country digital album debut in the history of Nielsen’s Soundscan, and the 4th biggest digital album debut to date, behind only Coldplay, Jack Johnson, and Kanye West. Taylor has the highest country sales debut of 2008 -- the only other country artists this year to debut at #1 on the Top 200 chart were Alan Jackson, George Strait and Kenny Chesney. Further, FEARLESS is the highest sales debut for a female country artist since Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks’ 2002 album releases. “White Horse,” the brand new single from the album which was featured on the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy, will debut at #13 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart this week, giving Taylor her 6th Top 20 debut of 2008. This breaks the all-time Billlboard record for the number of Top 20 debuts in a calendar year by any artist. In addition, Taylor’s 6 debuts and 7 total tracks on tomorrow’s charts each tie her with Hannah Montana for the most by a female artist in a single week. Of the 13 tracks on FEARLESS, 11 have now spent time on the Hot 100. Taylor reached another huge online milestone this week, surpassing the 120 million mark for music streams on MySpace, where she is consistently at the top of their highest ranking artists in all genres of music. Taylor has had more than 20 million MySpace streams in the past 10 days. “Love Story,” the lead single from FEARLESS, is currently in its second week at #1 on both the Billboard and USA Today/Mediabase/Country Aircheck country radio charts, reaching a weekly radio audience of more than 40 million listeners.