Why Michael Bublé's keeping it old school in a changing music industry

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I'm sitting in a hotel room facing Michael Bublé, and with a bit of imagination, it feels like looking in a mirror. Not physically – though we do share roundish faces, brown hair and a propensity for weight fluctuations – but existentially. Our mediums of choice, CDs and newspapers, have shared a historic target audience: aging traditionalists who buy physical copies of our work. But people aren't buying newspapers or CDs like they used to. They're going online. In 2016, it's expected that even a national paper – even Michael Bublé – should adapt to consumer demand.

So I look into the eyes of one of the 21st century's best CD salesmen and ask: Do you feel safe?

"Yes," he says, without hesitating. He's dressed in a grey sweater, navy pants and impeccably polished black boots, like a business-casual prince.

I'm dressed more like a busboy; with light scrutiny, my mirror metaphor does not hold up.

"Yes," he says again, more subdued. "Because I'm still a physical-sales artist. People will still stream – but the truth is, for me, it doesn't matter how my music gets out there."

It kind of does, though. Bublé and his business team masterfully play to his target audience. The day before our interview, he was in Florida for a Home Shopping Network special, singing and hawking Nobody But Me, his latest album of jazz and pop standards and originals, released this week.

He says he sold 17,000 copies that day – more than many musicians today will ever sell in their careers.

An HSN publicist couldn't confirm this number before publication, but let's be reasonable: If anyone's going to sell 17,000 CDs on a shopping channel, it's going to be Bublé.

"Even though it seems like it's being phased out, I found different avenues in which to get people that physical copy," he tells me. "I can tell you that we've looked for a way to beat the odds."

If the odds aren't stacked against Bublé, they are for everyone else. Nobody But Me – featuring four original songs among standards made famous by the likes of Dean Martin and Tony Bennett – is his first studio album since 2013.

Much has changed since then. He's had two sons, Noah and Elias, and wanted to be with them instead of in the studio.

But a lot has changed in the music industry, too.

In 2013, when Bublé's To Be Loved was the seventh-best-selling album worldwide, streaming music was hardly in the consumer lexicon.

Global leader Spotify wasn't in Canada and Apple Music didn't even exist. Physical music sales made up more than half of industry revenue; downloads accounted for two-thirds of digital revenue.

But things have changed drastically. Digital revenue now outpaces physical revenue for recorded music. And Bublé's label, Warner Music Group, saw streaming become its main source of revenue earlier this year.

A few moments after his first comment, Bublé changes his tack. "The question you asked me is, do I feel safe? Well, you should never feel safe," he says. "You should never rest on your laurels. You're only as good as your last record. And that's why this record, for me, was massive. It's subjective, but this was the most important record of my life."

The 41-year-old acknowledges the cliché when he says it, but parenthood gave him "perspective" going into the new album. There are obvious changes to the music he consumes: As he marched into our interview, he was stomping, clapping and singing Everything is Awesome, The Lego Movie's scourge to parents everywhere. But slowing down between records revealed in him a desire to change things up, too.

He decided, for the first time, that he wanted to be a lead producer.

And he expanded the way he composed originals, breaking from familiar co-writers to work with masterminds from Nashville, Los Angeles and Sweden, including the likes of Max Martin and Johan Carlsson. "It's a scary thing, writing with your peers, because you're supposed to be the guy who's written hit songs," Bublé says.

Usually he'd work on four or five original songs and put three on a record. This time he says he walked away with 25 originals, and selected three – as well as Someday, a new song by Carlsson, Meghan Trainor and Harry Styles – for the album. But if he was embracing such a new direction, why didn't he make a whole album of original music?

"I have too much respect, love, adoration for the standards," he says. "I love that I can battle for radio positions with anyone from Drake to the Weeknd. But if you told me that I had to go to a desert island and I could only bring one genre of music, it would be Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett, and Frank Sinatra."

Even when he tried changing everything, Michael Bublé stayed the same.

The old ways will always draw him in. Sure, his music is on streaming services, but it's old-school decisions that keep his career massive.

He's not just selling CDs on shopping channels; he's putting them in Shoppers Drug Marts, enticing consumers to buy his music as they pick up Pepto-Bismol.

Its late October release is a savvy business move guaranteeing massive Christmas sales. You will see his face everywhere for at least half a year beyond that.

And that will drive audiences to his sold-out shows for months to come. Bublé isn't worried about the changing music industry because he defies the way everyone else under 50, save for Adele and a few others, is supposed to operate.

So he looks to examples such as the Rolling Stones. They can't hope to break streaming records like Drake, he says.

"But people are still going to go by the millions to experience being with them. Because they truly do have an organic sense of communication and connection with their audience. There's no other way to put it."