The days of asking a celebrity to sign your napkin, or boob, are well and truly over you guys, since the autograph is totally dead. Not that we’re surprised or anything.
Taylor Swift confirmed the end of the autograph in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, in which she mused on the future of the music industry and how things have changed in the past few years.
‘There are a few things I have witnessed becoming obsolete in the past few years, the first being autographs. I haven't been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera,’ she wrote. ‘The only memento "kids these days" want is a selfie. It's part of the new currency, which seems to be "how many followers you have on Instagram.”
She also said that even the movie business has changed dramatically, to the point where social media profiles are key in scoring roles – even for A-listers: ‘A friend of mine, who is an actress, told me that when the casting for her recent movie came down to two actresses, the casting director chose the actress with more Twitter followers,’ she wrote, going on say that she thinks the fans will be making the decisions about who gets signed by record labels.
‘I see this becoming a trend in the music industry. For me, this dates back to 2005 when I walked into my first record-label meetings, explaining to them that I had been communicating directly with my fans on this new site called Myspace. In the future, artists will get record deals because they have fans – not the other way around.’
Taylor also had a lot to say about file sharing and free downloads and believes that artists need to know their worth and demand it when it comes to making a living from their music. In fact, everyone should know their worth, not just those in the music business:
‘In recent years, you've probably read the articles about major recording artists who have decided to practically give their music away, for this promotion or that exclusive deal. My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet… is that they all realise their worth and ask for it.’
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.