Foresightfulness in the creation of pop music: Songwriters' insights, attitudes and actions.

This thesis is about awareness of change in music, as well as future-oriented thinking, and their role in the creative actions and rationales of pop songwriters. My aim is to build an understanding of foresightfulness in the context of creating pop music. I analyse the ways in which pop songwriters relate to changes in music and music trends, and their attempts to foresee alternative musical futures or to influence them. In addition, I investigate the conceptions, values and beliefs of pop songwriters that relate to trend-spotting and future-oriented thinking.

The research materials for the study consist of eight (8) interviews with Finnish professional songwriters in the field of pop music as well as three (3) field observations and the related documentation of songwriting sessions at international songwriting camps known as Song Castle and A-Pop Castle in 2015, 2017 and 2018. The resulting ethnographic research data are subjected to directed content analysis. In line with the phenomenographic approach, my main interest is in how my informants experience things, not in how things actually are. The concepts directing the analysis derive from futures studies: foresight, future consciousness and attitudes towards the future, as well as from sociological concepts applied in studies of popular music, such as space of possibilities.
On the theoretical level my study is built on systematic or confluential approaches to creativity. I investigate the creation of pop music as a psychological, social and cultural action, and domain-specific future consciousness as a component of creativity. More specifically, I bring popular music studies, futures studies and creativity studies together in the context of songwriting, examining foresightfulness as an ability, attitude or action that enhances or restricts creativity and thereby broadening current understanding of the concept. From this perspective, my study contributes to dismantling the opposition between creativity and commerce.

My dissertation draws a picture of creative work in the context of hit-oriented pop songwriting. It is a complex action guided by various factors such as following and anticipating trends, while simultaneously trying to create something that is novel but familiar. My main finding is to show the significant role of future-oriented thinking and foresightfulness in pop songwriting, aspects that are scarcely recognised and explicated by the writers. They anticipate continuity or change consciously or non-consciously in ways that resemble formalised futures studies or fashion forecasting. The “targets” of foresight range from other songwriters and artists to expectations of the audience and of gatekeepers. Almost all songwriters emphasise the importance of making up-to-date music, and they prove to have foresight, but very few of them apply foresight consciously. Music trends are observed individually, but knowledge about them is shared with colleagues, and in this way emerging trends are strengthened collectively. Foreseeing and influencing the future are often inseparable.
I also demonstrate how several contradictory conceptions, beliefs and values relate to, or influence foresightfulness among songwriters: their thoughts about the dynamics of change in music, audience expectations, individual abilities and being a songwriter, as well as being a pioneer or maintaining autonomy and honesty. The songwriters struggled with foresight, not least because of the new modes of consumption and fragmentism in musical trends. Some of them felt as if they were losing honesty in their creative process in attempting to follow trends, whereas for others, following and anticipating trends inspired them in their work.

A significant finding in this study was the lack of a strong belief among several Finnish songwriters in their chances of influencing international pop music. The gatekeeper role is considered crucial in the export of pop songs, but on the other hand, songwriters have contradictory conceptions about the role of record companies in creating and diffusing musical phenomena, for example. In light of the recent and ongoing structural changes in the music industry, even agents who are big players in the business struggle to understand how the system functions. Their understanding of the openness of futures, as well as low beliefs in their agency, are manifestations of how they perceive systems, which is a crucial aspect of future consciousness extending beyond the following year, for example.
Several songwriters see themselves as creative labourers for whom it is essential and satisfying to create songs within certain rules. Avoiding risk is, for them, more important than being a pioneer. The creative decision-making of pop songwriters is thus guided first and foremost by what they consider professionally reasonable, as opposed to possible or preferable. In this sense, their future consciousness extends further than merely attempting to foresee music trends.
On the theoretical level, I show how futures studies and fashion-forecasting terminology are applicable to future-oriented thinking in the context of creating pop music, but they do not adequately describe it. The concepts should be developed further for the benefit of musicology and the music industry.