Is the music industry, traditionally an arbiter of cool, out of touch with US consumers? It's a tough question to ask — and a tough time to ask it. But if you compare the results of the presidential election to the politics of artists and executives, it's hard not to.
The prevailing mood among the people I know is shock at the scale Donald TrumpHis victory – most expected a race so close that vote counting would continue all week – and an unsettling sense that the US is not the country we thought it was. What happened and why will be debated for years. There's also a more immediate question: Why didn't more people see this coming?
Part of the reason is that this is still visible so weird — I'm old enough to remember that talking about a professional golfer's private parts would be disparaging in politics, let alone the Republican party. But part of it is that, unwittingly, many people in the media space now live in a bubble. I am one of them: I live in Berlin and spend most of my time in the US in or near New York, and I read The New York Times and The New Yorker. When it comes to music, none of my favorite artists supported Trump, and one, Bruce Springsteen, actively campaigned against him. Some of the biggest musicians in the world have also supported Kamala Harris — Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter — as well as most music executives. Many of them must share my surprise.
Are we too disconnected from the mainstream?
A significant number of Trump supporters are right-wing racists – certainly enough to worry about. But it's hard to argue that Trump supporters are extremists if they get more than half the vote. By definition, it's mainstream. The troubling thing is that Democrats don't seem to know how to talk to them in a way that addresses their concerns. Calling them deplorable didn't work, and neither did arguing that Trump would be a disaster for democracy. (Democracy means people vote for their leaders — it doesn't mean they vote for the leaders you want.) Democrats focus more on what people can do for their country at a time when voters seem to care more about what their country can do for them. Ideas are important, but many people seem more focused on the affordability of groceries.
For whatever reason, it's now clear that there are more Trump voters than many people thought, including musicians and music executives. They are also younger and more diverse than people imagined. Many of them must listen to pop music. But is the music industry listening to them? The idea that it is controversial to support Trump without repeating any of his nastiest rhetoric is to turn one's back on more than half of American voters. That's not how mass marketing works.
The challenge Trump presents to American democracy is far more important than selling music, of course. And I suspect I'll get a few emails about how crazy it is to suggest that anyone sell music to people who think immigrants eat cats. But reaching different kinds of people with different kinds of art is what the music business is all about.
It is also what politics is supposed to do. Both the music industry and politics need to do better to reach large, diverse audiences. This often means connecting with existing fans, but it must also mean reaching out to new ones. Oftentimes, people just don't buy what they're selling, whether it's a new album or a new contender. But it's important to have these conversations — both for those of us who want to help elect a new president in four years and for those of us who want to argue that he's going to do a great job.
Increasingly, politics seems stuck in a loop, in which ideas are peddled and cheered by those who have already made up their minds about them. In music, this is known as the superfan strategy, and it's very important. But building one requires reaching out to new people to convert them into fans or supporters in the first place.
