Digital music sales unexpectedly declined in the first quarter of 2010. This was bad news for an industry that saw $11 billion in annual revenue evaporate between 2000 and 2008, and that had begun to view digital music downloads as a kind of panic room, a refuge from the slasher trends making mincemeat of business models and bottom lines.
But for music fans, there is an upside to creative destruction. On a Woodstock stage recently, I watched a friend stretch her lungs in some of the open space left by the industry’s retreat. Laurelyn Dossett stopped singing after college, got married, went to grad school, and raised three daughters on a quiet, tree-lined street. In her late 30s, having settled in North Carolina, she began inviting friends to her house to make music drawn from Appalachia and the Piedmont. Laurelyn formed a band, Polecat Creek, and resumed singing in public, building a base of fans and earning critical acclaim. Her recording career—enabled by the same inexpensive digital production and distribution that’s brutalized record companies—began in her 40s. Her friend Diana Jones, a Nashville singer-songwriter, also hit her stride in her own time. She won a Folk Alliance nomination three years ago as Emerging Artist of the Year—at age 41. The music biz thrives on teen spirit, not late blooms; artists who spend their youth raising kids or who “emerge” on a generational downbeat are consigned to work off the grid. But the grid itself is crumbling, and in the cracks exposed, older, idiosyncratic musicians are finding sustenance. Like Laurelyn and Diana, they give “Top 40” a whole new meaning.
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