Taylor Swift penned an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal predicting the future of the music industry.
The 24-year-old singer and songwriter explained the artist who put out quality music will continue to reap financial success. Swift is adamant music shouldn't be free and hopes to continue her optimism about the growth of the industry well after her time in the spotlight is over.
Check out the best snippets from Swift's op-ed piece below. Read the full feature for The Wall Street Journal here.
Swift's thoughts on the "downfall" of the industry:
"There are many (many) people who predict the downfall of music sales and the irrelevancy of the album as an economic entity. I am not one of them. In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace."
Swift on why music has value and should not be given out for free:
"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."
Swift on why artists should embrace the "YouTube" generation:
"In the YouTube generation we live in, I walked out onstage every night of my stadium tour last year knowing almost every fan had already seen the show online. To continue to show them something they had never seen before, I brought out dozens of special guest performers to sing their hits with me. My generation was raised being able to flip channels if we got bored, and we read the last page of the book when we got impatient. We want to be caught off guard, delighted, left in awe."
