前言: 前几天在ZITE上偶然看到Taylor Swift投稿到The Wall Street Journal的文章 很感兴趣她能写出什麽 於是看了一下，有些观念很值得一看 就着手尝试翻译，想分享这篇文章，就直接回文在这篇底下 英文不是很好，有错或不通顺请见谅，谢谢 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 连结: http://ppt.cc/gb~L ※JOURNAL REPORTS: LEADERSHIP ※For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story "The Singer-Songwriter Says Artists and Fans Will Still Form Deep Bonds, but They Will Do It in New Ways" ---------------------------Taylor Swift正文开始:-------------------------------- Where will the music industry be in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years? 音乐的未来在哪里 Before I tell you my thoughts on the matter, you should know that you're reading the opinion of an enthusiastic optimist: one of the few living souls in the music industry who still believes that the music industry is not dying …it's just coming alive. 在了解我的想法以前，你应该要知道我是一个热情的乐观主义者: 少数仍旧相信音乐产业 不会死去，而会慢慢苏醒... 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. Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently. 我知道有很多很多的人认为音乐产业会持续的衰退，且认为音乐产业的好坏和经济产业并 不相干。我并不这样认为，我的认知中，唱片的价值取决於音乐人所投注的心血，现在是 这样，以後也会是这样。当这些音乐人心血所完成後的成品，放上市场通路後，就产生了 经济的价值。但是，盗版、共享跟影音串流都使得这些影音创作的经济价值急遽的衰退， 不同的艺人，就必须采用不同的方式去面对这些问题。 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 realize their worth and ask for it. 近几年，也许你读过了很多的文章，可能关於某些大公司旗下的艺人，免费的提供他们的 音乐，或许是为了行销，也或许是为了某些特殊的理由。然而，我希望在未来，不仅仅是 音乐产业，甚至每位我所见过的年轻女孩....我希望他们都能明白，他们都值得去得到他 们应得的。 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. 音乐是艺术的一部分，艺术很重要且珍稀。重要且珍稀的事物是有价值的，有价值的事物 就应该要有让它有价值。就我的认知中，音乐不应该是免费的，而我也认为，在不久的将 来，任何音乐人及他们所属的公司都可以决定其作品的价值点，而我也希望他们不要低估 了他们自己，也不要低估他们艺术的价值。 【Arrows Through the Heart 穿心之箭】 In mentioning album sales, I'd like to point out that people are still buying albums, but now they're buying just a few of them. They are buying only the ones that hit them like an arrow through the heart or have made them feel strong or allowed them to feel like they really aren't alone in feeling so alone. It isn't as easy today as it was 20 years ago to have a multiplatinum-selling album, and as artists, that should challenge and motivate us. 谈到唱片的销售，我想说的是人们依旧购买专辑，也许买的量没有以前多了。但是，当这 些音乐能够一箭射进人们的心里面，让他们感到坚强，在孤单时不再只是一个人，他们就 会需要去购买这张专辑。就算在20年前的今天要有张多白金的专辑并不容易，然而身为音 乐人，我们必须要继续挑战并激励自己。 There are always going to be those artists who break through on an emotional level and end up in people's lives forever. The way I see it, fans view music the way they view their relationships. Some music is just for fun, a passing fling (the ones they dance to at clubs and parties for a month while the song is a huge radio hit, that they will soon forget they ever danced to). Some songs and albums represent seasons of our lives, like relationships that we hold dear in our memories but had their time and place in the past. 总是有一些成功的音乐人能够走进人们的心中，永恒的活在人们的生命中。我看待这些事 物的观点是，音乐之於人们如同感情生活。有些音乐只是娱乐，很快地消逝不见(像是在 夜店或派对上，播放时下最热门的流行乐，但在人们在狂欢劲舞後，这些音乐很快地被人 们遗忘)，但有些音乐或专辑，代表着我们生命中的一个过往，如同我们记忆中某一个重 要的人，占据着我们心理的某段时间、某个地点。 However, some artists will be like finding "the one." We will cherish every album they put out until they retire and we will play their music for our children and grandchildren. As an artist, this is the dream bond we hope to establish with our fans. I think the future still holds the possibility for this kind of bond, the one my father has with the Beach Boys and the one my mother has with Carly Simon. 然而，有些音乐人则成为了我们生命中的一个部分，我们会珍藏他们所发行的每一张专辑 ，尽管他们离开了音乐圈，我们依旧会把他们的音乐分享给我们的子子孙孙。身为一个音 乐人，这是我们所编织、追求的梦想债券，我相信在未来我们还是有机会来兑现这些梦想 债券。如同我父亲所珍爱的海滩男孩，及我母亲珍爱的Carly Simon。 I think forming a bond with fans in the future will come in the form of constantly providing them with the element of surprise. No, I did not say "shock"; I said "surprise." I believe couples can stay in love for decades if they just continue to surprise each other, so why can't this love affair exist between an artist and their fans? 我认为在未来，这种梦想债券的形式，将会是由音乐人不停地提供惊喜给粉丝。注意，我 说的不是”震惊”，而是”惊喜”。我相信情侣若能持续让彼此感到惊喜，他们将会一直 相爱着。也因此，音乐人何不考虑和他们的粉丝相爱一场呢。 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. I hope the next generation's artists will continue to think of inventive ways of keeping their audiences on their toes, as challenging as that might be. 我们活在YouTube的年代，去年我巡回演唱时，每个晚上当我走下舞台时，我其实心里都 明白每个粉丝可能都已经在网路上看完了整场演出。但是，为了要让支持我的粉丝每一次 都可以得到不 一样的惊喜，我还是每次都安排不同的特别来宾，来跟我一起表演他们的 热门歌曲。在我们这个世代的人，看电视感到无趣就转台，阅读缺乏耐心就直接翻到最後 一页。我们想要出其不意地被取悦，在记忆中留下一段惊奇，让我们可以回味并细细品尝 。我希望下个世代的艺术人也可以不停的去思考、找寻其他新的方式，让观众可以持续的 全神贯注在我们的表演，而这也会是一个必然的挑战。 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. 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." 在过去几年，我曾目睹了若干事务的消逝，第一个就是签名。自从I-Phone的自拍镜头发 明後，我再也没被要过签名。而这年代的小朋友唯一想要的纪念就是自拍，这是新流行的 一个部分，意味着你在Instagram会有多少人关注。 【Fan Power 粉丝的力量】 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. 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. 我有一个朋友，他是女演员，他告诉我当她最近拍摄的新电影在选角到只剩两位女演员时 ，导演选择了推特较多人在关注的那位女演员。而我也发现这在音乐圈中成为了一股趋势 。对我而言，这就像是在2005年，我第一次参与唱片公司的会议，我走进会议室，并向他 们解释我已经在一个叫做『MySpace』的社群网站跟我的粉丝做直接的沟通交流。在未来 ，音乐人只会因为有粉丝才会有合约。 Another theme I see fading into the gray is genre distinction. These days, nothing great you hear on the radio seems to come from just one musical influence. The wild, unpredictable fun in making music today is that anything goes. Pop sounds like hip hop; country sounds like rock; rock sounds like soul; and folk sounds like country—and to me, that's incredible progress. I want to make music that reflects all of my influences, and I think that in the coming decades the idea of genres will become less of a career-defining path and more of an organizational tool. 另外一项我认为正在凋零的事物就是音乐界线的模糊。这个时代，听到特定一种音乐其实 已经没有什麽了。在制作音乐过程中常有许多疯狂、不可预料的乐趣，在於任何元素都可 以放进音乐中。让流行音乐听起来像嘻哈、乡村音乐听起来像摇滚、摇滚听起来像灵魂、 而民谣听起来像乡村，对我而言，这是不可思议的进步。我想要做的音乐是能够反映所有 的我，而我认为在接下来的数十年里，人们因自己职业，去设限创造、发想任何艺术的概 念，这种现象会愈来愈少；反之，会愈来愈多的想法，会受到组织化方式的影响。 This moment in music is so exciting because the creative avenues an artist can explore are limitless. In this moment in music, stepping out of your comfort zone is rewarded, and sonic evolution is not only accepted…it is celebrated. The only real risk is being too afraid to take a risk at all. 现在的音乐愈来愈让人感到兴奋，因为在这条崭新大道上，音乐人能够无限的去探索、发 展任何创意。现在的音乐，能走出新的方式、跳出固有的框架会肯定能得到回馈。这场音 乐的演化不只是接不接受的问题，它将被欢庆。唯一的风险，就是我们害怕去冒这个险。 【Celebrity Spotlight 名人的光环】 I predict that some things will never change. There will always be an increasing fixation on the private lives of musicians, especially the younger ones. Artists who were at their commercial peak in the '70s, '80s and '90s tell me, "It was never this crazy for us back then!" And I suspect I'll be saying that same thing to younger artists someday (God help them). There continues to be a bad girl vs. good girl/clean-cut vs. sexy debate, and for as long as those labels exist, I just hope there will be contenders on both sides. Everyone needs someone to relate to. 我相信有些东西永远不会改变，就是人们对演艺人员私生活的关注，尤其是年轻的艺人。 很多在70年代、80年代、90年代叱吒风云的艺人告诉我『当时可没那麽疯狂』。而我也预 期，也许会有那麽一天将轮到我来提醒新进的演艺人员(愿主保佑他们)永远都会有坏女孩 vs 好女孩、清纯 vs 性感的争论。而这些标签存在的一天，我希望两边都会有其代表的 人，因为人们的心理都需要一个自己的想像。 And as for me? I'll just be sitting back and growing old, watching all of this happen or not happen, all the while trying to maintain a life rooted in this same optimism. And I'd also like a nice garden. 而我呢，我就慢慢的沉寂，愈变愈老，观察这些事情是否会发生，并且时时刻刻让自己的 生活保持一样的乐观。 对了，我还想要一个很棒的花园。 --

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