When was the last time you went to the record store? Ah-hah! That’s, that’s how it works, buddy. It’s the kids go to the record store, and the kids are — I was going to say “stupid,” but they’re not. They’re just ignorant. And many of them will evolve, you know, from really dumb stuff, because the dumb music is sort of like a joke that’s only funny once. And you can only go to a Justin Timberlake concert once. You go a second time, you see the same thing — maybe they got new fireworks, but Justin ain’t got nothing new to say, okay?

And, so, then you start to evolve up. And maybe you wind up at Bruce Hornsby, maybe you wind up at Willie Nelson, maybe you wind up at Randy Newman, maybe you wind up at Joni Mitchell, maybe wind up at James Taylor for God’s sake. But somewhere in there, you wind up loving music, and you evolve up to a level where you go after somebody who can really do it — Shawn Colvin, Mark Cohn, people who can really do it. And some of those kids are going to evolve to there, and that’ll be great. But I don’t see success for singer-songwriters. I don’t see it.

Source: A PBS interview with David Crosby