When Taylor Swift took to Twitter to announce 14 new concerts on the European leg of her “Eras Tour,” a historic tour that analysis says will be the first to break the record Billion Dollar Fundraiser, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to the social network to ask the American not to forget his northern neighbors. “Don’t make this another cruel summer,” he wrote, referring to the “cruel summer.”
The FBI’s Washington office also used the release of the third album Swift re-recorded to regain control of her first six studio jobs, launching the “Speak Now (FBI’s Version)” campaign, urging citizens to collaborate on information give.
There were also references to Swift in the hearing held in the US Senate in January, following the debacle experienced by Ticketmaster in selling tickets to concerts in the United States (problems shared in other places, such as France, repeated). ) brought the monopolistic practices of the company and its parent company Live Nation back into the limelight.
The trend toward “Swift” references has also permeated several of the numerous legislative initiatives launched at the state and federal levels in the US, demonstrating Swift’s political clout. And that impact on the highest spheres of power is just one of the elements that validate the true, multi-faceted and far-reaching phenomenon that the Pennsylvania singer has become at 33.
Breaking paradigms and unbreakable bonds
It’s been 17 years since Swift settled in Nashville as a teenager thanks to his determination parental support for his careerbroke into country with an album under his own name that broke with the paradigms that wrongly stated that it wasn’t music for girls and young people.
Those Swift met in those early days did not fail her. With every record, with every foray into new territory, with every reinvention and every step in its evolution, that connection was strengthened as followers were added and, especially followers.
In part, that’s because she began using technology to deepen relationships like no one else on the music scene before her. first with MySpace and Tumblr, then with Instagram and TikTok. Lucian Grainge, head of his current label Universal, believes that “the way he uses technology to create an authentic connection with his fans has defined the modern music industry in many ways.”
Swift has managed like few others to prove himself extraordinarily adept at navigating a pop culture that has morphed into an evolved pop culture require more than mere musical work. Today, when everything has become a kind of multiplayer game where you either give away something special or risk losing like a tear in the pouring rain of offers, she has every performance, song, video or message in the networks a kind of puzzle. His listeners are like Sherlock Holmes, Looking for hidden messages, hidden meanings… “I taught them to be like that,” she once admitted.
beyond the music
In the Swift phenomenon, that already has surpassed Barbra Streissand As the artist with the most albums at #1 (12), there’s something beyond all of that. Recently a psychiatrist signed an opinion piece in The New York Times explaining how Swift has helped transform her practice, particularly with girls, teens, and young people. His clear lyrics take away the parents’ worries, but are also far removed from irony or seemingly from one intellectual approachTell the audience that there are no right or wrong feelings.
For her part, Ann Powers, a critic for public radio -, has affirmed that Swift is “Much more innovative than people think” an artist with precise work that some find too rehearsed and lacking in true spontaneity. “He studied how young people shape their identities and their rules and discovered a way of writing songs that expressed this and honored the lineage of the denominational singer-songwriter,” explained the expert.
Essayist BD McClay, meanwhile, wrote in The Washington Post that in her portrayal of herself in her art, Swift “built a window that is actually a mirror.” If you look at the emotional world of his music All you see is yourself“. And according to him, “part of Swift’s appeal lies in that contradiction.”
Swift is also the artist between 2014 and 2017 He took out his entire catalogue Spotify, Remember that “things of value must be paid for” and that “The Music shouldn’t be free”. She’s the one who struck an agreement with Universal in 2018 that makes her the owner of all the music she records. And he’s the one who threw himself into it a feminist crusade against Scooter Braun, the man who reluctantly retained the rights to his first six masters and took part in the re-recording project. At the same time that she regained control and forced anyone who wanted to use this music to use the new versions, she educated young people on the issue of music rights and made it ethical and lucrative for them to close the new versions support . old records.
The reins of an empire
Then there’s something like The Eras Tour, his first tour in five years, with 52 shows in the US and 54 planned for the rest of the world, to which he might add more. In three and a half hours he covers 44 songs from 10 albums, a whole trajectory The size of the rooms and the capacity of tens of thousands of people does not prevent the participants from leaving the room and praising the sense of intimacy. And in sports arenas, often oozing testosterone, what has been called “jubilant femininity” lives on.
Swift offers both something old school and something similar keeps the algorithm active. In the words of Tyler Foggatt in The New Yorker: “He has created spectacle, an immersive real-life experience in an era dominated by brief online content, and yet the tour is also perfectly designed to to be consumed online.”
According to calculations by the “Wall Street Journal”, without having the official data, each concert generates revenue of approx 13 million dollars, of which Swift retains between 40% and 60% after deduction of costs. If you also add the profit from the sale of “merchandising” and also subtract the costs, it is an estimate With the tour he will end up earning between 400 and 600 million.
study object
Unsurprisingly, Swift has become the subject of research. Stanford It’s one of the universities that, like Berklee College of Music, NYU (which awarded him his PhD in 2022) or the University of Texas at Austin, have come together to offer courses that focus on Swift, be it Studied his writings and compositions on her career in relation to feminism, race and industry.
It also attracts attention from economists such as Paul Krugman, who used it a few weeks ago to comment on the live music industry, or specialized business media such as Bloomberg or the “Journal”. In the first you will find a video in which this is analyzed Swiftonomics and the second has addressed the lessons that make it possible to learn about the Swift business, which its fans affectionately call “capitalist queen”.
Unlike other artists like Rihanna did not diversify the business. She remains deeply involved and surrounds herself with a limited circle of advisors and confidants that include her parents. And it didn’t go badly: according to “Forbes” She is the second richest woman in the music industrywith a net worth of $740 million.
