• The average length of a song intro continues to be 7.1 seconds long
• 71% of the intros in 2011 were under 10 seconds long
• Over 1 out of 4 intros were zero seconds long
• The average tempo for a song was 101 BPM
• Despite feeling like the charts are beat driven, 54% of the top sellers were 100 BPM or less

Rather than write a lot of words, I figured it’s best to show you the rest in a very snazzy infographic, courtesy of my new friends at Killer Infographics. Enjoy!

I’m a big fan of the book The Curse Of The Mogul. Authors Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald and Ava Seave discuss the historical facts of disruption on many businesses and how it relates to the modern entertainment business. One important idea is that when the walls of distribution come down, with access comes devaluation. In recent weeks, I’ve come to fully embrace this as the root cause behind artists’ displeasure at perceived royalty rates.

The first clue came in a recent Businessweek article where three anonymous music executives said the average person spends $60 a year on iTunes. Since Spotify and other subscription services charge $10 a month, this means the revenue per consumer should double. Sounds like great news for the music business. While I know that the “average” won’t literally double, let’s just go with it for the sake of this example, and keep in mind that what I’ll outline is therefore a “best case” scenario.

If the average person is spending $60 a year on iTunes, it stands to reason that they are spending it on a minimum of 4 artists (4 albums x $15 price tag for deluxe albums) and a maximum of 87 artists (87 singles x $.69 discount price). Realistically, most people will be smack in the middle having bought a couple of regular $9.99 albums and a few singles at the $1.29 premium. If narrowed down to a month, on average the most someone would spend money on is 7 artists.

But how do we know how many artists get heard on Spotify? Well, we can make an educated guess by looking at the Facebook streams of playlists. This is admittedly unscientific, but will highlight the issue nevertheless. I examined what 10 random Facebook friends of mine listened to on a variety of subscription services. They ran the gamut from one person who listened to only one album to someone who listened to over 400 songs, which included albums, singles and playlists. What I found is that the average person listened to 3 songs per artist.

Data on how much people are listening to subscription services on a monthly basis is not available enough to get an exact reliable statistic. However, looking both anecdotally online and from my own personal knowledge, the average person is likely listening to 10-15 hours a month. Using this statistic, we can deduce that people are listening to somewhere between 40 artists (120 songs (5 minute song average x 10 hours) divided by 3 songs per artist) and 100 artists (300 songs (3 minute song average x 15 hours) divided by 3 songs per artist) per month.

In an iTunes world, the average person consumes music by, at most, 7 artists a month. In a Spotify world, the average person consumes music by, at least 40 artists a month. So in the best case scenario, even though the dollar pool has increased by 2x, the number of artists the payouts are distributed to has increased by nearly 6x. Given that this is the best case scenario, the figure is almost certainly higher than that. In a dollars and cent perspective, while the average artist grossed as little as 69 cents per person in iTunes revenue, the average artist probably grosses no more than 25 cents in subscription revenue.

The reality is that the very thing that gives indie artists access to subscription distribution is what is keeping the royalty rate low for everyone. The pool to increase payouts per artists not only doesn’t exist, it CAN’T exist without raising the price of subscription to a price-prohibitive rate of $50/month or higher. The only other potential solution would be to create a service that excluded access to many artists to allow existing artists to obtain a larger chunk of the royalty pie. This would give services a gatekeeper role not unlike current physical music retailers. Many artists would certainly complain because they were kept out, but the ones that did get in would be happier with a more reasonable rate.

As a new independent label owner, I actually welcome all the artists and labels keeping themselves off Spotify. It actually allows for an opportunity for us that are on these services to command a larger slice of the royalty pie. However, don’t think of Spotify as being cheapskates. The truth is that as an unknown artist, if you want access to the big game, you must understand that until you’re popular that it comes at a (lower) price.

Universal Music Group (UMG) ordered YouTube to pull the video over copyright restrictions because its artists were performing on it without their permission.  Megaupload claimed they had all the footage cleared and threatened to sue UMG.  Recently, the video came back on YouTube after they sided with Megaupload on the ownership. Watch the video for yourself here:

Now, I’m not here to debate the ethics of Megaupload nor whether UMG overreached in their takedown relationship with YouTube. What interests me is that this may actually turn into an interesting case on sampling and at what point a sample turns into a song.

At this point, given what is known publicly, I’m going to make some assumptions that I don’t have confirmation of. It appears that Megaupload was able to get interviews with celebs including Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams and Kanye West where they endorse the site. Given the pushback that Megaupload gave to UMG, I assume that these interviewees signed artist release forms that gave the site permission to use that footage in promotional videos without further compensation. These are standard agreements for artists to sign in these situations. UMG generally has control over the usage of the artist when they are singing/performing, but not over interview footage. As such, Megaupload would likely be correct in their assertion of ownership.

However, some of the interview samples were altered to fit rhythmically and musically to the instrumental backing track. In my opinion, this would include Will.I.Am’s appearance at the beginning as well as Chris Brown, Diddy & Lil’ Jon’s appearance at the bridge. While spoken word has been altered to fit a musical composition for decades now (groundbreaking group Tackhead first comes to mind), this is the first instance I can think of where interview footage of major musical artists privately-owned by a company was altered into a musical composition. This opens up a Pandora’s box of questions:

If the broad clearances for interview footage do allow for alterations into musical compositions, might many media outlets (such as Entertainment Tonight or CNN) now be able to create songs from stars without further compensation to said stars?

If it could be determined that these sampled portions are part of the musical composition, wouldn’t the artists (Will.I.Am, etc.) be entitled to songwriting credit? As such, wouldn’t they be able to block the song since they would have to approve first use? I would doubt that Megaupload had clearance so broad to allow for blanket first use permission prior to creation of a musical composition. If the artist would receive songwriting credit, then presumably they would profit from the YouTube exploitation as well.

If these portions are indeed to be found as musical works, wouldn’t UMG’s takedown claim prove to be true as their exclusive contracts with their artists would supersede the artist’s own signature with Megaupload? If they are not musical works, can we expect a rash of altered samples of speech by musical artists to become legal for stream and sale? And if so, how would payments work given the above questions regarding songwriting credit/royalties?

Will this change the dynamic of the artist release agreements all major media outlets utilize? Will they now have to be altered to give the artists some comfort that the footage would not be used for musical compositions?

Sampling in general has been a game of testing the limits ever since it was first implemented in the music business. I’m not really taking a position either way on this issue because I get the value in both sides of the argument. What will be interesting is the outcome as I presume it will have some lasting impact on songs to follow.

I know there are many sampling and free speech experts who read this blog and have far more expertise than I do on this subject. What are your thoughts?

UPDATE (12-19-11): Today, the agreement form with Will.I.Am leaked online and can be found here. The language is typically broad and standard. While I’m not a lawyer, there is certainly reason to side with Megaupload because the language is so broad to cover all the examples mentioned above. If so, then they’ve screwed the pooch for themselves and others as now you’ll likely see many music biz pros taking a fresh look at these agreements and refusing many of these reaches. Of course, there’s a confidentiality clause that’s obviously now been breached. I would presume Will.I.Am did not do the breaching, so could that now make the agreement null and void?

As I was cleaning up around the house, I stumbled across an old promo item from U2 that I had from many years back.  It was a Solicitation Kit to convince retailers to stock their then-new Achtung Baby album on store shelves.  With all the recent hype around the album’s 20th anniversary, I cracked it open to remind myself of the kit’s contents.  Inside, it contained an advanced cassette of several songs, a video tape, and of the greatest interest here, the original marketing plan.  There’s nothing inherently controversial in what was done to market the album 20 years ago, but there is a lot of interesting tidbits that show how much marketing has changed in the last 20 years, including:

• The list price of a CD has decreased, even while inflation has gone up.  We remember $16 CDs in 2001 pretty easily, but they were that expensive in 1991 too.
• Of the “Tips/Trade” publications used to hype the industry, 50% of them no longer exist.
• Of the “Consumer Publications” used, 25% of them no longer exist
• Of the “Alternative Magazines” used, over 70% of them no longer exist

Boiled down, the marketing plan really consisted of very few elements:

• Radio
• Music Video
• Press Articles
• Press Promotions/Ads
• Retail POP Displays

While a tour was part of the “plan” (1 sentence for what became the groundbreaking “Zoo TV” tour), it really didn’t factor into the album release plan.  Contrast that with all that’s needed now.  You’d need to add blog presence, website promotion, social networking, mobile strategies, digital retail promotions, music sync placements, and others.  No wonder those who are industry veterans pine for the old days.

The packaging paragraph seems rather innocuous, offering two formats including one that is a jewel box only giving “the retailer and the consumer the format they want.”  It turns out that was the most controversial part.  While now we only think of CDs as jewel box only, that was not the case in 1991.  In fact, U2 was the first superstar act to release a CD just in a jewel box.  While consumers may have wanted that, it was not the format that retailers wanted. Billboard magazine reported that Tower Records and National Record Mart refused to order the jewel box only version because they “didn’t want to send the wrong message to the labels.”

Finally, it’s also interesting that this marketing plan was done so long ago, that it was prepared on a typewriter. My, how times change. Enjoy.

Achtung Baby Marketing Plan

The real issue is one of volume. Nearly all indie artists don’t have it. Judging by Spotify’s 100 Most Played, most people aren’t coming to the site for indie artists as only about 10% is independent. Indies complained about unfair payments in retail in previous decades, so this issue isn’t new. The only way to increase your leverage for better rates, as it is in any other industry, is to increase your demand. The major labels do an excellent job of this, which is where their higher rates stem from.

When an artist complains that their Spotify royalty is only a couple of bucks, what is an increased rate really going to do? Double a $2.50 royalty statement to $5? Is that really making a difference in a bank account? Those that complain are obscuring the true issue about the quality of their music. The lack of repeatability and marketing to drive demand causes low usage that results in low royalties.

Let’s take repeatability. Previously, indies did OK because they created some buzz around an artist that resulted in a CD sale. That album would then be listened to several times, but most of them really never received more than a dozen or so listens. I look around my home office and see hundreds of indie albums I own that I never listened to more than 5 or 6 times. Look at your iTunes play count and see how many indie albums you have truly listened to more than that. It’s not many. Many of these albums were good albums too, and I still think positively about them. But I have no emotional pull to listen to them again. From a consumer perspective, I used to essentially pay a high premium for that privilege by purchasing, but I really was unable to extract the true value because I never listened enough.

Now in a changed world of Spotify and other services, we no longer have to pay that premium. This means that the music has to be good enough to warrant repeat listens. Not just repeat listens while it’s new and hot, but repeat listens over time. So is Spotify to blame because the music doesn’t generate sufficient volume of listens? It’s crucial that an artist and label collaborate to make music that requires multiple listens.

Then one has to look at marketing needed to know your album even exists. Rdio has THREE THOUSAND releases in their new release section just for this week. There are only 10,080 minutes in a week. Do the math. If you didn’t sleep, you would have time to hear only one song per new release. AND listen to that song only once. This is intense competition. With that volume out there, it should almost be a point of pride if you take in five bucks. If you’re not making people aware that your music is out there, it will go unlistened to. I didn’t know the band Uniform Notion existed until they complained they weren’t getting paid well by Spotify.

So, it’s a free country, and you could choose not to be on Spotify. The issue is that you then encounter the one thing worse than getting paid peanuts and that’s obscurity. People want to be entertained by music, not have to hunt things down. It has to be easy, which is why Spotify has gained so much traction. If you manage to get an average music fan’s attention on your band (out of the THREE THOUSAND others that released something that week) for 2 seconds and they look on Spotify and it’s not there, do you know what they do? They move on to another song. And you’ve lost your chance of gaining a fan. And the royalty. The number of people who would then spend time searching for alternative listening methods is miniscule.

When I first published Futurehit.DNA a few years ago, I detailed the techniques you needed in this song for this very reasons. Songs moving forward will make money by its repeatability, not its buyability. Believe me, if you and/or your label had songs with significant volume of activity, I’m pretty certain you could exercise that leverage for increased royalty rates. I wish I could tell you life is fair, but did you make the same money in a club as the opening act that the headliner did? Could you charge the same for a T-shirt as the headliner or did you have to cut your price to be competitive? The music business is full of these inequities. The only surefire way to justify getting the most money is to be great and have the audience to prove it.

Albums with one good song on it are no longer money makers. Songs with one good listen in them aren’t either.

The one question that I saw dominate the headlines was the question of whether the launch of Spotify had any impact on their business. CEO Joe Kennedy responded by saying, “We haven’t been able to discern any impacts from the new digital music initiatives that have launched over the past three to six months.” I guess since Spotify is the music buzz service of the month this question would make sense. However, Spotify’s most recent U.S. number had them at 1.4 million users while Pandora hit 100 million registered users in July and regularly shows over 30 million monthly users. Quite frankly, I think my 5 year old daughter could have discerned that Spotify would not impact Pandora’s business today.

However, it’s what Kennedy said next that is the most important take-away for you Futurehitmakers to understand how to interact with both services. “Fundamentally, Spotify operated in a different segment—owned music, subscription music, leased music, whatever you want to call it. We really operate in radio, where there’s such a strong tradition of ad-supported, free-to-the-consumer music.” This is not just earnings report spin, this is about as factual as they come. Saying Pandora and Spotify are competitors is to say that Power 99 and Wal-Mart also go head-to-head.

These are two separate businesses with different expectations from the consumer. Pandora is a very passive experience, which is often preferred by most music consumers. A person hits a button and gets music for hours on end without any effort. Spotify is a mostly engaged experience, whereby you have to actively find and play each individual song. A passive experience can be had thru playlists, but those are not as inherently passive as a radio experience. Much like someone might listen to the radio on the drive into the office and then listen to a CD at night, it’s entirely logical that a person might listen to Pandora while cleaning the house, but create a Spotify playlist for the party they cleaned for.

This distinction is also reflected in the amount of earnings you can receive from these outlets. SInce Spotify allows on-demand plays while Pandora gives you extremely limited choice in the music you want to hear, Spotify ends up paying 2-4x the royalties for each play. Again, this is not unlike the current situation between retail and radio. Buying a CD or a download is ultimately paying a premium for the ability to listen when you want. Radio pays less (and in the US, only to songwriters) but makes up some of that gap with their sheer volume. Again, different businesses.

The discovery of new music is also greatly different. I would argue that Pandora’s structure for discovery is fundamentally better. Like radio, you’re listening in the background and a song you know nothing about comes out of nowhere. You weren’t prepared or expecting it. It just shows up at your doorstep. Granted, Pandora’s song choices have strayed away from true new discovery in recent years, but it is set up well when it does occur. On Spotify, you have to know that the song exists from another source to find it and listen to it. You can also “discover” it from noticing a friend interacting with the song on their feed. Even then, something about the recommendation (the cover, the person, the song title) has to grab you in order to hit play and actually discover it.

There is one common element outside of the music itself for musicians to fundamentally understand. That is the need to get your song played over and over in order to earn money from recorded music. Throughout Futurehit.DNA, I detail how you can make your song more likely to be played over and over. This is crucial to understand as it becomes imperative for any song moving forward. You can’t rely on the high premiums one used to receive from a retail sale. To get those same revenues, people have to listen to your song dozens of times. How many songs that you discovered this year have you listened to more than ten times?

As separate music business categories, Spotify will not eat into Pandora’s business. Instead, both businesses, along with many others, will grow into unique, strong platforms that will be responsible for large portions of your revenue. Creating music to fit those platforms will only ensure you can profit from their growth.

By the way, despite the endless ink you see on both services in the music press, it’s always enlightening to see what the average person knows of these services:

The other thing worth noting as we dive into the analysis is that the predictions I wrote two years ago are no longer coming true. They are true. When compared against last year, most of the theories outlined in Futurehit.DNA only became more valid. The facts are here. Sales are incrementally increasing as more songs adopt the Futurehit model. Those songs overindex in the revenue growth the music business has so far this year.

THE AVERAGE LENGTH OF INTROS IS 4.88 SECONDS
Intros are getting significantly shorter. Compared to last year, the average intro decreased by 37%. The Top 25 had an average intro length of 2.96 seconds. In fact, there were only two songs with an intro over 7 seconds. Last year, it was 2 of the Top 10. Now it’s 2 of the Top 25. And sales increased as a result. Expand to the Top 50 and it’s only 20% of the titles with intros longer than 7 seconds. That’s down from 48% last year. The chances of a song with a longer intro succeeding continue to decrease every year.

THE AVERAGE SONG LENGTH IS 3 MINUTES 53 SECONDS
In Futurehit.DNA, I remark how longer songs own more of the musical conversation. For a brief moment, I thought this theory might prove incorrect as many hits last year were under 3 1/2 minutes. However, this year, the average song length increased by 6 seconds, a 2.5% increase. That may not seem like a lot, but out of the Top 50 songs there were also two fewer songs exceeding 4 minutes than last year. Therefore, there were less of those to skew the average up. It definitely seems to work in the song’s favor to not cut their songs short.

RELEASE MORE SONGS MORE OFTEN
11 artists have more than one track in the Top 50 sellers. A couple of the artists’ songs are holdovers from 2010, but many of them are, once again, releasing more songs more often. Lady Gaga got mixed reviews for releasing multiple singles in quick succession, but 2 of them are in the Top 50 sellers. Katy Perry released 5 singles from her album in 13 months. Two of those singles are in the Top 10 sellers for the year so far. Her 5 singles collectively have sold 8.6 million singles in 2011 alone. This means 1 out of every 32 new songs sold so far this year was a Katy Perry song. Keep fans engaged with multiple singles at any level and they will reward you with increased success.

THE BEAT HAS SLOWED A LITTLE
The average tempo has slowed down a bit to 103.6 BPM. But the real story is that there are more songs this year in the ballad tempo range. Last year was notable for only having one true ballad in the Top 50. This year technically has two (Christina Perri and the Jason Aldean/Kelly Clarkson duet). But what’s more interesting is that there are far more songs under 80 BPMs this year overall. They are just not “ballads”. They are songs that feel technically at a slower tempo with the drum beats, but don’t feel like a ballad because the vocals are double timed. Songs under 80 BPM accounted for 20% of the Top 50. Now, rhythmic music is still more popular (26% have BPMs of 125 or greater), but compared to last year this is a stylistic shift. In fact, despite signs suggesting music has become homogenized, one could argue that having nearly half of the top selling songs exist in a tempo extreme on either end of the spectrum says otherwise.

ROCK CONTINUES TO BE DEAD
Only 1 song out of the Top 50 sellers is considered a rock song. At least according to Soundscan. Most people I know don’t consider Adele rock. But if you want to cling to hope for rock music, you probably have to. That is the only “rock” track to have sold over 1 million copies so far this year. Yes, one could argue that rock is an album-based format, and indeed rock fares better there with 8 out of the Top 50. Although, that’s odd on its own because the Soundscan rock album chart does not include Adele, which would have made it 9 out of the Top 50. So I guess Adele’s single is a rock song, but the whole album is not a rock album. Is this indicative of rock’s current identity crisis?

ADELE IS BIG BECAUSE IT’S A FUTUREHIT
Forgetting about the above debate on what category Adele is in, the undeniable category it’s in is a smash hit. Already expected to sweep the Grammys early next year, many people are saying Adele’s success is due to her authenticity in a world of more processed songs. While I agree with this assessment and can’t deny Adele’s stellar vocal performance, I can also give examples of great authentic artists who are not selling at that level. The difference is that Adele’s single is structured like a futurehit. The intro is 5 seconds long, is at a walking tempo (105 BPM), contains repetition of many lyrics with a choral counter-chorus, has a very sly shift in the chord progression at the bridge, and contains many dynamic shifts throughout the song. The subtleties of modern futurehit song structures amidst its retro-soul feel is what takes this song over the top and makes it as undeniable as it is. Artistic credibility and commercial sensibilities can coexist when done right. When they do, they create a massive hit and help lift an entire industry.

What exactly is Klout? Klout measures your overall online influence on a scale of 1 to 100. It looks at Twitter, Facebook and the like and examines several factors. It looks at your True Reach, or how big is your engaged audience. It looks at Amplification Probability, or how likely a person on your audience will click your link. It also looks at your Network Influence, such as how often you get retweeted. All told, it can measure exactly how influential you are.

Why do you need to know this? Because having a hit is not just how you write and record it. It’s also how well you get that hit out there. You are probably understanding the power of Twitter and Facebook in spreading the word about your music, but what are you REALLY doing about it?

Klout’s not the only one doing this measurement either. A new site called PeerIndex is in Beta and also registers influence, but thru a variety of additional factors, not to mention singling out your industry. The fact that a few weeks ago, I saw several of my friends identifying their PeerIndex ranking says that this does have a good amount of meaning.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Klout lately because how much you have of it is crucial to how successful you may be. My recent posts on Rebecca Black were certainly created to spread lessons on why it became a hit. But I also knew that her trending combined with my analysis would be a piece likely spread. This, in turn, raises my Klout and expands my influence. I also am very judicious on who I follow and what ratio it’s at to people who follow me. A ratio that’s too high will lower my Klout, and influence is of great importance.

As an executive or as an artist, how do you use your Klout? Do you manage yourself to have great influence, or are you spreading yourself wide, but thin? You should also be looking to the Klout of those that follow you. An article last year in AdAge showed how several companies find fans with Klout and target them with perks. This is probably some of the smartest targeted marketing you can do. It’s the kind of thing that musicians used to do well, but somehow have lost touch. Treat the most influential fans well, and watch your fanbase grow. Not hard to understand.

Klout is also something that interestingly enough did not come up in Billboard’s list of 140 Most Influential Tweeters. I am honored having been chosen as one of those influencers on the list, but also feel that when Klout scores are added, you get some more interesting observations. Of the top 10 most influential, 40% are in the hip-hop world. While this shouldn’t have surprised me, it did. It may not get the same press as Ashton Kutcher or Charlie Sheen, but pound for pound, the street buzz mentality of hip-hop music has spread to Twitter and is continuing with abandonment online. Other notable observations include high Klout for those affiliated with super stars and, naturally, those with celebrity personalities. Billboard’s most influential writer also turns out to be their Editor-In-Chief, Danyel Smith who also comes from the Urban world.

@TomDavenport on PeerIndex took many from the Billboard list and created a list that then ranked them in order of influence. The Top 100 Global Music Business Chart takes out artists and adds in folks from the UK list. It keeps in press and bloggers, hence Perez Hilton’s #1 ranking. However, it got me thinking. If we’re truly looking at influence, it shouldn’t be filtered by a chart, but be compiled from any eligible person. For example, Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun would have a high ranking due to his popularity. Let me know who is missing from this list so we can compile a Music Biz executive list that’s based as impartially as one can make it. Add your favorite forgotten execs in the comments and we’ll put together a chart.

Incidentally, I’m at #62 right behind Ian Rogers and ahead of Jeremy Welt. I probably still have some work to do.

So…who else is missing from this list?

Well, apparently, if you’re the music business, moving an extra 12.5 million units is a sign that the business is all but over. Huh? Say whut? The reason is because that 12.5 million units was in digital downloads and was representative of a 1% increase from 2009 to 2010 in digital downloads. Everyone from Forrester Research to Reuters to local PBS stations has been sounding the death knell for the format. When looked at against 13% and 28% increases the previous year, there is indeed reason to be concerned about growth opportunities in the format. But let’s be honest, when you get to 1.1 BILLION transactions of anything (including downloads), the curve for large percentage increases becomes very difficult.

But something funny happened on the way to the download’s death bed. It grew. So far this year, digital downloads have increased 10% and added nearly 44 million downloads to last year’s total. In less than half the year, we’ve already had 3x more growth than all of last year. Adding over 2 million units a week of anything is certainly not a business in decline.

This is happening largely because more songs are being made with the Futurehit mindset in their vision. While there are nearly 1/3 more titles that have sold over 1 million units so far, the Top 30 collectively is only up 7.6% in total unit sales. This means a somewhat wider breadth of songs are selling in decent numbers. When you add in growth in on-demand video streaming and even subscriptions,

The singles market has yet to hit a ceiling. The opportunities to make a hit single succeed when following the new rules of the digital landscape is still large. Don’t sit around waiting for that album to be done. Accept the marketplace where over a billion transaction take place and still grows.

A new report by Dr. Nathan DeWall and other psychologists suggest that this is actually a new trend in pop music. The New York Times just reported on the study which covered pop music from 1980 to 2007. The study found that in the last decade, there is a definite marked increase in narcissism in popular music. The words “I” and “me” are popping up more frequently, while “you” and “us” are in decline. The report also highlights an increase in the usage of words of hostility.

While they didn’t cover popular music from 2008 until 2010, my study from last year certainly confirms that narcissism is indeed alive and well in pop music. Why this is happening may be a combination of what these psychologists are finding alongside the technological trends. Two of the study’s co-authors published The Narcissism Epidemic two years ago and have certainly found this subject to be a growing trend in college age youth even before they saw it in pop music. A study conducted largely in the same time period points to this regular increase via a standardized test.

There is actually debate amongst these psychologists as to whether people are indeed becoming more narcissistic or if they are just more willing to say so. For you, the reader looking to make a hit song, that’s not even a concern. The facts are there pointing to hit songs being more about “me” than it is about “you”. Certainly the societal changes causing youth to act this way is a factor. With music, though, the environment in which one listens is also a component. In offices, people don’t listen to the same thing over one loudspeaker. They listen to individual music over headphones. Kids are not listening to the radio station that mom put on, they’re listening to an iPod in the back seat. More time spent in front of individual computers is leading to less group listening.

What one listens to and responds to generally is a byproduct of how they listen. If they are listening to music by themselves, songs about someone else or about a group of people sound odd. If you’re in isolation and are singing by yourself, songs about “me” are fitting. The decrease in these group listening experiences are responsible for songs in the 2nd or 3rd person.

Also worth noting is the increase in “partying” songs, which is a group activity. I’ll make an assumption that parties now make up a greater percentage of group listening experiences than they had before. Since the song that needs to fit this experience also needs to be successful in isolation to be profitable, they must carefully craft the song to fit both needs. Last year’s hit, “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha, does that rather succinctly. The first verse starts out with eight mentions of “I” variations. It then follows with four mentions of “Our” which, while acknowledging a group, is also possessive and certainly narcissistic in attitude against the broader song. However, once you reach the chorus, there’s only one “I” and one “we” mention in the entire refrain. The chorus is a more general statement about partying that feels strong in a group moment without fully defining the group for when the listener is alone. Overall, while the song appears to be about a group party, it’s really just about the singer allowing the song to exist in both worlds. Final counts:
“I” variations – 30
“We” variations – 16
“you” variations – 12

The data is clearly showing even with psychologists now. Successful music is generally narcissistic. If you’re going to be selfish enough to want to financially succeed in your music career, I guess you need to carry that over to the way you craft your songs.