Taylor Swift came away from the Academy of Country Music Awards with the
win for the Entertainer of the Year, and now she has the chance to earn some brass to prove she is a viable genre-crossing artist. She is up for the Top Artist award at the upcoming Billboard Music Awards, but she faces some very formidable competition.
Justin Bieber has dominated the pre-teen market, the most powerful economic market in the business, despite the fact that they are buying albums and concert tickets with allowance money or nagging mom and dad until they decide listening to My World 2.0 track through the car speakers or in person is less traumatizing than watching their child throw a tantrum.
Eminem had seemingly slunk into retirement at the top of the rapping game a few years ago, but has increasingly made his presence known, releasing his seventh studio album Recovery in the summer of 2010, winning the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Rap Album and going multi-platinum in just about every major national music market in the world.
Lady Gaga has a new album coming out (Born This Way) and she has been touring since 2009. She has become the next great diva and this year there is no denying it because even a Britney Spears comeback tour could not derail her dominance at the box office.
Rihanna is perhaps the dark horse, if there is one in a category that only celebrates the most widely acclaimed musical personalities. She is a hip hop and dance hall superstar, but she matters little else and has barely gone platinum in the U.S. with her latest album Loud.
For Taylor Swift to repeat as the Top Artist (
she already won in 2009), she will need to have had enough album sales, downloads and airplay to defeat these four. She has a pretty good chance since there are
1,990 country music stations in the nation and that number dwarfs any other genre. Her album, Speak Now, has gone triple-platinum. She even has a young fan base that likely downloads her music like crazy (if the domination of American Idol by country singers is any indication of this). The only thing not working in her favor is that the country music genre is a pretty crowded field, so the other four may enjoy airplay on stations with much shorter playlists.
Tune on May 22, 2011 to see if she is able to emerge victorious again.
