Speaker 1: Hiatt's Westkasova. The Big Take is taking a break this week,
Speaker 1: so here's an episode you might have missed.
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift's Midnight breaking records, moving more than one million
Speaker 2: units in a week, and she did it.
Speaker 3: In three day.
Speaker 1: Full Taylor takeover the phenomenon that is Tyler Swift.
Speaker 4: Another record. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is on track to
Speaker 4: become the highest grossing tour of all time.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the Era's Tour.
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift has been a megastar for years now, but
Speaker 1: these days the pop singer is absolutely unavoidable. Oh Her
Speaker 1: hit songs, her record breaking Eras concert tour, and a
Speaker 1: new blockbuster movie now to mention her approachable, down to
Speaker 1: earth persona have won her tens of millions of diehard fans.
Speaker 6: People come up to me and maybe like, a you
Speaker 6: gonna just like do a show with like all the
Speaker 6: albums in it, And.
Speaker 2: I was like, Yeah, it's gonna be called the Aerostur
Speaker 2: see you there.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Devin Pendleton and Claire Ballentine report that Swift has
Speaker 1: also made astute business decisions and has a high tolerance
Speaker 1: for taking risks as a result. At age thirty three,
Speaker 1: She's now reached a new milestone, billionaire.
Speaker 7: Never really have I ever seen an entertainer, so an athlete,
Speaker 7: or a musician or a actor, really become a billionaire
Speaker 7: based on their art alone. She's actually really done it
Speaker 7: based on her music, and that's extraordinary and very difficult
Speaker 7: to do.
Speaker 6: It was ah by design, because I'm a master of mine.
Speaker 1: I'm west Kasova today on the Big Take the Business
Speaker 1: of being Taylor Swift. Devin Claire. Obviously this was like
Speaker 1: the summer of Taylor Swift. But Devin, why did you
Speaker 1: want to go find out how much she's worth?
Speaker 7: Taylor was everywhere this summer. She's been around for a while,
Speaker 7: but all of a sudden, she was just this incredibly
Speaker 7: epic moment. I don't think in my lifetime I've ever
Speaker 7: been as close to living in a monoculture as this summer.
Speaker 7: And of course, you know, as living I tabulate how
Speaker 7: much people are worth. So of course we're all curious.
Speaker 7: I'm thinking, like, how much is she made from this?
Speaker 7: She's got to be a billionaire. And no, didn't seem
Speaker 7: like anyone had declared she was a billionaire. But surely
Speaker 7: the Era's tour, which is just this mega hit this
Speaker 7: summer has pushed her over the edge. So we got
Speaker 7: to crunching some numbers and turned out that the Taylor
Speaker 7: Swift economy universe was incredibly vast and way more complex
Speaker 7: than I had any idea.
Speaker 6: And I remember when we first started this project, didn't
Speaker 6: you initially think she was almost a billionaire but not
Speaker 6: quite so? Then it was really fun as the reporting
Speaker 6: went on to see, oh she's crossed.
Speaker 3: That mart Yeah, And it was exactly that, like the
Speaker 3: Aras tour.
Speaker 7: We started out I think as a placeholder saying Taylor
Speaker 7: Swift high nine figures and then all of a sudden thinking,
Speaker 7: oh my gosh, no, she's done it.
Speaker 5: Like ring the.
Speaker 1: Gong, we're here, and I'd really like to get into
Speaker 1: all the different things that combine to really push her
Speaker 1: over the top. But you also write that for a musician,
Speaker 1: even when as fabulously successful as she is, reaching a
Speaker 1: billion dollars is not easy and pretty unusual.
Speaker 3: Yes, it really is.
Speaker 7: And I've been covering billionaires and super rich people for
Speaker 7: sixteen years and never really have I ever seen an entertainer,
Speaker 7: so an athlete, or a musician or a actor really become
Speaker 7: a billionaire based on their art alone. Like when they
Speaker 7: have done it, it's usually been because of a business venture,
Speaker 7: a terrific fragrance deal or dine a property branding thing.
Speaker 7: But she's actually really done it based on her music,
Speaker 7: and that's extraordinary and very difficult to do.
Speaker 1: Claire, we started talking about the Era's Tour, which is
Speaker 1: the thing I think people are most aware of right now.
Speaker 1: Just how big was Eras for Taylor Swift.
Speaker 6: So the Eras Tour came about post pandemic, there was
Speaker 6: so much demand for concerts and during the pandemic when
Speaker 6: everything was shut down, she released four albums in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty and twenty twenty one, and then came out with
Speaker 6: a brand new album Midnights last year, and she really
Speaker 6: capitalized on this moment where people had this demand for
Speaker 6: live music. And you know, she could have done this
Speaker 6: tour for just her most recent albums, for you know,
Speaker 6: the ones that hadn't gotten the whole you know, roll
Speaker 6: out on a world not under lockdown, but instead she
Speaker 6: sort of chose to make this a celebration of her
Speaker 6: entire catalog and career, and that sort of created this
Speaker 6: huge cultural moment that we saw this summer.
Speaker 7: Not only did she have all these concerts, but these
Speaker 7: concerts were in stadiums, massive stadiums, like football stadiums, and
Speaker 7: that is also remarkable because she packed these stadiums. I mean,
Speaker 7: they were all sold out. And it's really just a
Speaker 7: tiny kind of sliver of musicians who can fill a stadium.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like this very elite group of people.
Speaker 6: People were paying so much money to go to these concerts.
Speaker 6: It was unbelievable.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So the shows were two hundred and fifty four
Speaker 7: dollars on average, but many people paid so much more
Speaker 7: than that because of the resale market, there's obviously tiered seating,
Speaker 7: so I mean, sky's the limit. I don't know exactly
Speaker 7: who paid the most, but in tens of thousands of
Speaker 7: dollars easily.
Speaker 6: And I thought one thing that she did that was
Speaker 6: so smart in these tours is so she had the
Speaker 6: list of songs that she would play at each show,
Speaker 6: and of course the fans quickly picked up on that
Speaker 6: and it was published, you know, the set list, but
Speaker 6: at each show, she had a surprise song or a
Speaker 6: couple of surprise songs, and that could be anything from
Speaker 6: her entire catalog of music. And so I thought that
Speaker 6: was so smart because it added this element of surprise
Speaker 6: to each show. And you know, I've heard people talking about,
Speaker 6: you know, the different concerts that they went to this summer,
Speaker 6: and the thing that people ask is they were like,
Speaker 6: what was your surprise song?
Speaker 1: So, Devin, when you added all up, what was this
Speaker 1: giant spectacle of the Era's tour really worth?
Speaker 7: We estimated that so far the tours brought in over
Speaker 7: seven hundred million dollars. That is based just on ticket sales.
Speaker 7: That doesn't include merch that doesn't include soft pretzels and
Speaker 7: wings and all those other things that people buy at
Speaker 7: the concert. That's really just based on ticket sales, based
Speaker 7: on the average price of two hundred and fifty four dollars.
Speaker 1: And so the actual value, sort of the knock on
Speaker 1: economic effect is actually a whole lot larger than that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Bloomberg Economics estimates that just this North American leg
Speaker 6: of the tour contributed four point three billion dollars to GDP,
Speaker 6: which is tremendous. We saw hotel revenues at some of
Speaker 6: these cities just go through the roof, you know, going
Speaker 6: out to restaurants when they're traveling. It was a big
Speaker 6: item for summer travel. This year. You saw a lot
Speaker 6: of the cities that really were seeing huge benefits of
Speaker 6: her being there, and they wanted her there and were
Speaker 6: able just to capitalize on that to really boost their
Speaker 6: local economies.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you write which really stood
Speaker 1: out was this idea that it caused such an economic
Speaker 1: ripple wherever it went that the Federal Reserve started watching
Speaker 1: these sales as an economic indicator.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I think that for them, it was a pretty
Speaker 6: notable point that so many people had the money to
Speaker 6: pay for these tickets. It's pretty incredible that people would
Speaker 6: have enough money to go out and do that. It
Speaker 6: was a sign of the consumer strength, and I think
Speaker 6: that's what they were really looking for this summer. You know, Taylor,
Speaker 6: in addition Beyonce and of course there's the Barbie movie
Speaker 6: and Oppenheimer and some of these major blockbusters that people
Speaker 6: were going out and spending on the summer and it
Speaker 6: really showed that people just felt secure enough in their
Speaker 6: economic situations to go out and spend money on these tours.
Speaker 1: Devin, the Era's tour was kind of the big center
Speaker 1: piece of traction that I think a lot of people see,
Speaker 1: but you also write that behind the scenes, Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: has been very savvy at building a business around her persona,
Speaker 1: her music, and like the whole Taylor Swift ecosystem is
Speaker 1: really what also drives this increase in.
Speaker 3: Her wealth she has.
Speaker 7: Where we are looking backwards, you can really see how
Speaker 7: savvy she's been from a pretty young age. I guess
Speaker 7: one of the sort of watershed moments would be back
Speaker 7: in twenty fifteen. I think it was Spotify was picking
Speaker 7: up a lot of traction, was where most people were
Speaker 7: turning to to get their music at Spotify and other
Speaker 7: streaming services, and she yanked all of her music off
Speaker 7: of it in protest of what she said was unfair.
Speaker 3: Compensation, saying, basically, this is my art.
Speaker 5: You're not putting a proper value on my art.
Speaker 4: She tells Yahoo Music this morning. Spotify felt like an experiment,
Speaker 4: and she's not willing to contribute her life's work to
Speaker 4: an experiment. She says, I try to really remain open
Speaker 4: minded about things because I do think it's important to
Speaker 4: be a part of progress. But I think it's really
Speaker 4: up for debate whether Spotify is actual progress.
Speaker 7: And she kind of had the power to do that
Speaker 7: and her fans were very happy to see her music
Speaker 7: out elsewhere.
Speaker 5: It was off for a number of years. I think
Speaker 5: she went back on in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And we don't know the terms of the deal,
Speaker 7: of course, that she negotiated Spotify. When she came back on.
Speaker 7: You can only surmise that she struck a better deal.
Speaker 7: That would say was sort of a notable thing for one,
Speaker 7: because obviously it probably worked out monetarily for her in
Speaker 7: the end, but also you kind of shine a light
Speaker 7: on this disproportion in the music industry between these streamers
Speaker 7: kind of using their power to be the place where musicians,
Speaker 7: if they want to get hurt and want to attract
Speaker 7: new listeners, they really have to put their music there.
Speaker 7: And yet they're paid a tiny, tiny, you know, fraction
Speaker 7: of a penny per stream It's really not that much
Speaker 7: money if you're not a huge star like a Taylor Swift.
Speaker 7: So she kind of was like positioning herself as an
Speaker 7: ally of musicians at large.
Speaker 1: And this is a really important point because it used
Speaker 1: to be that musicians would make a lot of their
Speaker 1: money from selling albums and then tapes and then CDs,
Speaker 1: but now it really is performing much more than streaming
Speaker 1: or the sales of the actual music itself that drives
Speaker 1: a musician's.
Speaker 3: Profits, Yes, exactly, which is tough.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think about it.
Speaker 7: A viral musician, maybe I don't want a tour that
Speaker 7: sounds really grueling, But if you really want to make
Speaker 7: a lot of money, like you have to be out
Speaker 7: performing because that's where the margin is.
Speaker 1: And yet you write that she's one of the few
Speaker 1: musicians who is able to make money selling physical copies
Speaker 1: of music when almost everybody else has just gone kind
Speaker 1: of to digital.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she's been able to sort of capitalize on that
Speaker 6: fan base and has positioned a lot of her albums
Speaker 6: and her record sales as this collector's item, and that's
Speaker 6: pretty unique. I mean you're seeing, you know, records that
Speaker 6: are sold out because she's advertised them to her fans,
Speaker 6: and they view it as this sort of badge of
Speaker 6: honor to have a physical copy of her music, not
Speaker 6: just streaming it online.
Speaker 7: And music analyst I was talking to telling me she
Speaker 7: even sells CDs. I mean, lots of musicians today, they
Speaker 7: of course, they still make physical music, they still put
Speaker 7: out final they still put out CDs, But the difference
Speaker 7: is Taylor's really selling them. She probably is producing much
Speaker 7: bigger quantities because they're going to move. I think that's
Speaker 7: maybe some of her demographic is so young that it's
Speaker 7: like cool and retro as a record, a vinyl record
Speaker 7: to some people.
Speaker 5: I don't know how they play it.
Speaker 1: But when we come back Taylor Swift's fight to take
Speaker 1: back control of her music. The other really big thing
Speaker 1: that Taylor Swift did that you write about was to
Speaker 1: take back control of her own music catalog.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So, how it works in music is often when an
Speaker 7: artist signs with a record label, it's kind of an
Speaker 7: artist for higher deal. Typically, as they say yes, this
Speaker 7: record label is going to produce an album for the artist.
Speaker 7: In return, they give the artist a big chunk of
Speaker 7: money and the record label gets to keep what they
Speaker 7: call usually the masters writes to the music, which is
Speaker 7: the copyright to the actual music recording, the actual music
Speaker 7: that they make, the songs that go on an album
Speaker 7: the record label keeps. So that means if the songs
Speaker 7: are played in the future in a public setting, or
Speaker 7: if they're used in a commercial, or if they're streamed
Speaker 7: on Spotify, they get a good healthy royalty stream down
Speaker 7: the road, so that was the deal Taylor Swift had
Speaker 7: for her first six albums. It was for a record
Speaker 7: label called Big Machine, which is based in Nashville, and
Speaker 7: they really kind of took a chance on her. I mean,
Speaker 7: she was fourteen years old when she signed with them,
Speaker 7: and she was with them for six years, and then
Speaker 7: she laughed. She basically went independent and the record label
Speaker 7: was sold. The record label's biggest asset by far was
Speaker 7: the masters to Taylor Swift's albums, and then ultimately a
Speaker 7: few years later, Taylor Swift's masters itself was sold again.
Speaker 7: And there was some drama to these sales because it
Speaker 7: involved a former manager of hers, so she had a
Speaker 7: tricky relationship with But it meant that Taylor Swift didn't
Speaker 7: have control of her masters. She basically didn't own that
Speaker 7: music essentially anymore. She did have some rights to it
Speaker 7: because she wrote the songs, but she didn't have like
Speaker 7: the big meaty, really valuable rights that are known as
Speaker 7: the masters. And she really was very public about how
Speaker 7: upset she was that she lost control of these rights,
Speaker 7: that it was her music and it was really hard
Speaker 7: to see it sold twice, and that she said she
Speaker 7: did not have an opportunity to buy those rights even
Speaker 7: though she wanted to.
Speaker 5: That was really what she wanted more than anything else.
Speaker 5: So she said what she was.
Speaker 7: Going to do was re record all of those albums
Speaker 7: and re record them so that she would own the rights.
Speaker 5: Now, now, could you re record? Oh yeah, might you
Speaker 5: do that? Oh yeah, that's a plan.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely, And that was a really bold thing to do.
Speaker 7: First of all, it's very hard to like re record
Speaker 7: a song and make it sound exactly like the original,
Speaker 7: especially when you consider like she's thirty three now, she
Speaker 7: was a teenager when she did some of these songs. Also,
Speaker 7: I mean, it's risky. It basically means that, yes, she's
Speaker 7: going to have the masters, but there's another version of
Speaker 7: these songs out there, So how valuable are her master's
Speaker 7: going to be? And that's kind of like where the
Speaker 7: power of Taylor's fan base comes in. So she's four
Speaker 7: albums in of the sixth total she's going to do,
Speaker 7: and she's calling these new versions parentheses Taylor's version, And
Speaker 7: it's not hard to imagine that the fans, her millions
Speaker 7: and millions of passionate fans, they want to listen to
Speaker 7: Taylor's version because Taylor's done a really good job of
Speaker 7: vilifying how it all went down with her first six albums.
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift keeps on making music history. Her latest album,
Speaker 2: Speak Now, Taylor's Version debut at number one on Billboard's
Speaker 2: Album charts this week. No big surprise here, right. That
Speaker 2: gives her four albums in the top ten at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 6: It's like Beatles ask.
Speaker 5: It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Claire, a lot of these millions and millions
Speaker 1: of passionate fans were buying Taylor's version also owned the
Speaker 1: original version, so she's getting double the sales on some
Speaker 1: of these albums.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible, you know. And she's
Speaker 6: not just re recording the initial albums like an identical version.
Speaker 6: She's also so adding some of these songs that were cut.
Speaker 6: So in some cases she's adding ten or more additional
Speaker 6: songs that people haven't heard before to each album. So
Speaker 6: it's almost like you're getting a better version of these
Speaker 6: albums that you loved from you know, ten years ago,
Speaker 6: and you're also getting new music from that era that
Speaker 6: you hadn't heard before. In addition to that, obviously, she's
Speaker 6: used you know, records and other merch and there are
Speaker 6: all these accessories you can get with the release of
Speaker 6: a new re recording, and the fan base of course
Speaker 6: just will buy anything that she puts out.
Speaker 1: And Devin, when you had all that up, do we
Speaker 1: know what her new Taylor's Version albums are? Ashley worth?
Speaker 7: So it's conjecture for sure, Like everything you know, that's
Speaker 7: a private asset. But we have some interesting comparable transactions
Speaker 7: to look at because it's been more common in the
Speaker 7: past few years for musicians to sell their catalogs.
Speaker 3: Their catalog is basically.
Speaker 7: Rights to their music that they own, so they're going
Speaker 7: to have a piece to their music rights and they've
Speaker 7: been selling it. So we've seen Bruce Springsteen sold his
Speaker 7: catalog for five hundred and fifty million dollars a couple
Speaker 7: of years ago. Just a couple of weeks ago, Katie
Speaker 7: Perry sold hers for a reported two hundred and twenty
Speaker 7: five million dollars.
Speaker 3: So what would Taylor Swifts be worth? So we'd have
Speaker 3: to kind.
Speaker 7: Of look at her whole body of work and know
Speaker 7: that for the Taylor's Version, there's kind of a duplicate
Speaker 7: set out there floating around, which is going to dilute slightly,
Speaker 7: but I think that Dilution's going to become, you know,
Speaker 7: almost not a thing in the future because the Taylor's
Speaker 7: version is going to dominate. And she also has the
Speaker 7: albums that she recorded after she left Big Machine, including
Speaker 7: Midnights and some others. So altogether, I mean we got
Speaker 7: a range. Some people said it could be worth up
Speaker 7: to a billion dollars her catalog, like at the most
Speaker 7: sort of bullish. Other people said or like, you know,
Speaker 7: four hundred five hundred million. So I think four hundred
Speaker 7: five hundred million is what we went for with for
Speaker 7: our official net worth analysis, with sort of the caveat.
Speaker 5: That it could be worth much more.
Speaker 7: And one of the reasons that it could be worth
Speaker 7: much more is that Taylor Swift a has just this
Speaker 7: huge passionate fan base who are going to follow her
Speaker 7: through her career. And b Taylor Swift is thirty three,
Speaker 7: so she has so much to mean she's calling this
Speaker 7: tour her eras tour, but I mean there's so many
Speaker 7: more eras to come.
Speaker 6: It's funny whenever you know there's a report of a
Speaker 6: Taylor Swift breakup or her new relationship, all the fans
Speaker 6: just are thinking, oh yeah, We've got lots of albums
Speaker 6: to come from this. She'll take inspiration from this breakup.
Speaker 6: And you know, with her new relationship with NFL star
Speaker 6: Travis Kelcey, all the fans are thinking, oh, yeah, we're
Speaker 6: going to get new music from this era as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some material.
Speaker 1: You're right that just the attention of that new relationship
Speaker 1: has also had huge sales effects.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we saw just you know, this rumored relationship
Speaker 6: between the two really drive interest in NFL games. There
Speaker 6: was a twenty two percent increase in total audience that
Speaker 6: the NFL saw just because people wanted to watch and
Speaker 6: for a glimpse of Taylor. So it just really showed
Speaker 6: her ability to drive consumer behavior and how people really
Speaker 6: will flock to whatever she is doing, even if it's football.
Speaker 6: You know, you saw more women have at least a
Speaker 6: surface level interest in what was going on with these games.
Speaker 6: Sales of his jersey increased four hundred percent because people
Speaker 6: were suddenly you know, interested in that aspect because of
Speaker 6: his relationship with Taylor. So it was pretty remarkable, and
Speaker 6: I will say the NFL really did capitalize on that too.
Speaker 6: I mean, they were showing her constantly in some of
Speaker 6: these games. And you know, I think they realize as
Speaker 6: well that you know, this is a way for them
Speaker 6: to boost their audience too, So it sort of was
Speaker 6: a mutually beneficial partnership between the two of them.
Speaker 1: After the break the inner workings of Taylor Swift, Inc. Devin,
Speaker 1: how do you go about trying to evaluate Taylor's swifts? Well,
Speaker 1: there's some stuff that's public, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff isn't public.
Speaker 7: So we came up with an estimate of one point
Speaker 7: one billion dollars. But I cannot stress enough that that
Speaker 7: is a conservative estimate because we try not to make
Speaker 7: too many assumptions when we're doing these networth estimates. And
Speaker 7: so you have to start with Taylor Swift is you
Speaker 7: have to think about earnings because of course she's breaking
Speaker 7: in money from streaming and from concert ticket sales and
Speaker 7: from music sales.
Speaker 5: So some of that information's public.
Speaker 7: I mean, we know average ticket price, we know how
Speaker 7: many tickets she's sold, how many tours she's done, because
Speaker 7: this is her sixth tour, I believe you basically just
Speaker 7: have to add up all that money. We also have
Speaker 7: to factor in she's paying taxes, we have to factor
Speaker 7: and she pays her team her agents or attorneys, and
Speaker 7: then of course there are some pieces we approach more
Speaker 7: like a private asset. Her real estate is quite significant
Speaker 7: built up that and we can definitely put a value
Speaker 7: on that, and also the music catalog, which is an
Speaker 7: increasingly really important discrete asset for musicians. So there was
Speaker 7: the exercise of trying to figure out how much would
Speaker 7: someone pay for that if she were to sell it.
Speaker 7: It is a small, i think, tightly managed little organization,
Speaker 7: but it's i'd say, very serious about what it does.
Speaker 7: So one interesting thing is that she has it looks
Speaker 7: like a number of LLC's. It seems to be ten,
Speaker 7: and we think it's ten because her father, Scott Swift,
Speaker 7: is a longtime registered investment advisor with Merrill Lynch. He
Speaker 7: started in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, which is where Taylor Swift was from,
Speaker 7: the family moved to Nashville, and we've seen in these
Speaker 7: filings from the Securities Exchange Commission, which if you're a
Speaker 7: registered investment advisor you have.
Speaker 5: To file with them that her dad also.
Speaker 7: Helps oversee ten LLC's which are affiliated with different parts
Speaker 7: of her business or holdings. Some of these LLC's oversea
Speaker 7: properties she owns. She has some really lovely properties in
Speaker 7: Beverly Hills and in Rhode Island. All together they're worth
Speaker 7: one hundred and ten million dollars. One of them manages
Speaker 7: to private jets, one of them owns an airplane hangar.
Speaker 7: One of them, which I think is a very important,
Speaker 7: owns a merchandising business, and obviously merchandising such an important
Speaker 7: part of her business that brings in a huge amount
Speaker 7: of revenue at these concerts and then also just through
Speaker 7: her own website. He also helps oversee a copyright related business.
Speaker 7: We don't have a lot of visibility into that. But
Speaker 7: she has all of these really catchy, famous lyrics. They
Speaker 7: are known to kind of police the use of these
Speaker 7: lyrics and songs quite rigorously, and.
Speaker 6: I think it really just speaks to how she's kept
Speaker 6: it very in house. I mean, she's had her dad
Speaker 6: really helped drive this. It also speaks to she's obviously
Speaker 6: worked very hard for her career and has been tremendously successful.
Speaker 6: But you know, she didn't start from absolutely no way.
Speaker 6: She did have a little guidance on the way, and
Speaker 6: I think that really set the foundation for her to
Speaker 6: be so lucrative later on you know, we've seen a
Speaker 6: lot of musicians have missteps, but because it's so tightly controlled,
Speaker 6: and I think she had her dad to advise her
Speaker 6: on in a lot of these things that sort of
Speaker 6: helped build the basis for this, you know, hugely profitable
Speaker 6: career later on.
Speaker 1: And another thing you write about is that she's not
Speaker 1: just selling things to her fans, selling music, it's that
Speaker 1: she has developed this way of speaking to them directly
Speaker 1: through social media and other platforms in a way that
Speaker 1: previous big artists were not able to do.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Taylor Swift is a digital native. I mean
Speaker 7: she grew up in a time where communicating on the
Speaker 7: internet through social media was completely normal and it's what
Speaker 7: you did. Being you know, a little bit confessional was
Speaker 7: a very normal and appropriate way to engage with people.
Speaker 7: And she has done a great job kind of finding
Speaker 7: a voice that really spoken to her fans, that treads
Speaker 7: this line between being private enough but also open and
Speaker 7: seeming like a friend. And I think that's really like
Speaker 7: ingrained her into the hearts of so many people. You know,
Speaker 7: it was just this this incredible, successful and talented artist,
Speaker 7: but who also feels like someone I could know and
Speaker 7: someone whose relationships I know, and I hear about her
Speaker 7: heartache and I know about her backstory, and that has
Speaker 7: been really powerful and unique. Like you can't really imagine
Speaker 7: Michael Jackson having that relationship with his fans are definitely
Speaker 7: not Madonna, you know, really different kind of megastar fan relationship.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think she's tremendously relatable in a lot
Speaker 6: of ways. I mean, we've seen her catalog, her relationships
Speaker 6: and breakups and all of these songs since she was sixteen,
Speaker 6: and people feel like they've grown up with her through
Speaker 6: these various life events that she's gone through and then
Speaker 6: written about in her songs so transparently. So people really
Speaker 6: do feel like they know her, which of course can
Speaker 6: be a ble uched sword. You know, people think they
Speaker 6: know a lot about life, and who knows what's actually
Speaker 6: true and what's not. But regardless, people really do feel
Speaker 6: like they have this inside look into her life and
Speaker 6: what she's going through, and that just makes her so
Speaker 6: much more relatable to them.
Speaker 7: And it's also sort of like a treasure hunt aspect
Speaker 7: to it too, Like she has like.
Speaker 5: Clues what does she call them, Easter eggs? Easter eggs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, she has Easter eggs of when she's releasing
Speaker 6: albums and things like that, she'll put a little Easter
Speaker 6: egg in, like maybe a photo she posts on Instagram.
Speaker 6: And you know, people have theories that are probably ludicrous
Speaker 6: and just how elaborate they are, but she definitely does
Speaker 6: purposely put some hints in her social media timeline of
Speaker 6: things to come that she's going to release or do.
Speaker 1: Well. Speaking of things to come, what is next for
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift? Where does she go from here?
Speaker 7: Writing the story, I kind of felt like we were writing
Speaker 7: about someone sort of at that peak, like how could
Speaker 7: it get crazier? But then she goes and releases this movie,
Speaker 7: The Era's Concert Tour Movie, which in its opening weekend
Speaker 7: did ninety two point eight million dollars in sales, by
Speaker 7: far the biggest concert movie ever, And so she was
Speaker 7: kind of allowing, after all this buzz, all of us
Speaker 7: poor people who didn't get to see it now have
Speaker 7: a chance to.
Speaker 5: Go watch it.
Speaker 7: We could watch it again and again, and even people
Speaker 7: who did go to the concert are buying tickets because
Speaker 7: this movie is a front row seat, so it's a
Speaker 7: totally different vantage point. And I think she's just caught
Speaker 7: a really long career ahead of her, and we've already
Speaker 7: seen this really interesting transformation from country to pop country
Speaker 7: to really pop star, so you know she could take
Speaker 7: it in all sorts of really different directions going forward.
Speaker 1: And Claire the eras tour itself now is going on
Speaker 1: the road again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she has a whole international leg of the tour
Speaker 6: coming up and you know, likely going to do tremendous
Speaker 6: ticket sales and merg sales there, So she has a
Speaker 6: lot to go in terms of profits coming up just
Speaker 6: from this upcoming leg of her tour.
Speaker 1: And I know it's one person who's going to be
Speaker 1: seeing her in tour overseas.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm actually going to France to see her. My
Speaker 6: friend was able to get us tickets at a more
Speaker 6: reasonable price than we could in the US, so it's
Speaker 6: gonna be really fun. And also I think to shows.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm not the only person doing this. People
Speaker 6: are traveling distances to see her shows internationally, so she
Speaker 6: does have a lot to come just with this tour.
Speaker 1: Take me with you, Devin, Claire, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. Thank you, thank you, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to us here at the Big Take. It's a
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