October 27, 2023 • 28 mins
Taylor Swift’s monumental success is due to her talent as a performer — as well as her business acumen. Bloomberg’s Devon Pendleton and Claire Ballentine join this episode to talk about how the pop star has taken ownership of her music, built a fiercely loyal fan base–and become a billionaire in the process.
Read more: Taylor Swift Vaults to Billionaire Ranks With Blockbuster Eras Tour
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taylor Swift's Midnight breaking records, moving more than one million
units in a week, and she did it in three day.
Full Taylor takeover.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The phenomenon that is Tyler Swift. Another record. Taylor Swift's
Eras Tour is.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
On track to become the highest grossing tour of all time.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Welcome to the Aeros Tour. Taylor Swift has been a
megastar for years now, but these days the pop singer
is absolutely unavoidable. Oh her hit songs, her record breaking
Eras concert tour, and a new blockbuster movie, not to
(00:41):
mention her approachable, down to earth persona. Have won heard
tens of millions of diehard fans.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
People come up to me and they'd be like, you're
you gonna just like do a show with like all
the albums in it, And I was like, Yeah, it's
gonna be called the Aeros Tour. See you there.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Bloomberg's Devin Pendleton and Claire Ballentine report that Swift has
also made astute business decisions and has a high tolerance
for taking risks. As a result. At age thirty three,
she's now reached a new milestone billionaire.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Never really have I ever seen an entertainer. So an
athlete or a musician or an actor really become a
billionaire based on their art alone. She's actually really done
it based on her music, and that's extraordinary and very
difficult to do.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It was all by design, because I'm a master of mine.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
I'm West Kasova today on the Big Take The Business
of being Taylor Swift. Devin Claire, Obviously this was like
the summer of Taylor Swift. But Devin, why did you
want to go find out how much she's worth?
Speaker 5 (02:06):
Taylor was everywhere this summer. She's been around for a while,
but all of a sudden, she was just this incredibly
epic moment. I don't think in my lifetime I've ever
been as close to living in a monoculture as this summer.
And of course, you know, as living I tabulate how
much people are worth, So of course we're all curious.
I'm thinking, like, how much is she made from this?
(02:27):
She's got to be a billionaire, And no, didn't seem
like anyone had declared she was a billionaire. But surely
the Era's tour, which is just this mega hit this summer,
has pushed her over the edge. So we got to
crunching some numbers and turned out that the Taylor Swift
economy universe was incredibly vast and way more complex than
I had any idea.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And I remember when we first started this project, didn't
you initially think she was almost a billionaire but not
quite so? Then it was really fun as the reporting
went on to see, oh, she's crossed that.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Mart Yeah, And it was exactly that, like the Aras tour.
We started out I think as a placeholder saying Taylor
Swift high nine figures and then all of a sudden thinking,
oh my gosh, no, she's done it. Like ring the gong,
we're here, and.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I really like to get into all the different things
that combine to really push her over the top. But
you also write that for a musician, even when as
fabulously successful as she is, reaching a billion dollars is
not easy and pretty unusual.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Yes, it really is. And I've been covering billionaires and
super rich people for sixteen years and never really have
I ever seen an entertainer, so an athlete, or a
musician or a actor really become a billionaire based on
their art alone. Like when they have done it, it's
usually been because of a business venture, a terrific fragrance
(03:51):
steel or dine, a property branding thing. But she's actually
really done it based on her music, and that's extraordinary
and very difficult to do.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Claire, we started talking about the Era's Tour, which is
the thing I think people are most aware of right now,
just how big was Eras for Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So the arastur came about post pandemic. There was so
much demand for concerts, and during the pandemic when everything
was shut down, she released four albums in twenty twenty
and twenty twenty one and then came out with a
brand new album, Midnight's Last Year, and she really capitalized
(04:31):
on this moment where people had this demand for live music.
And you know, she could have done this tour for
just her most recent albums, for you know, the ones
that hadn't gotten the whole you know, Rollout and a
world not under lockdown, but instead she sort of chose
to make this a celebration of her entire catalog and career,
(04:54):
and that sort of created this huge cultural moment that
we saw this summer.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Not only did she have all these co but these
concerts were in stadiums, massive stadiums like football stadiums, and
that is also remarkable because she packed these stadiums. I mean,
they were all sold out, and it's really just a
tiny kind of sliver of musicians who can fill a stadium.
(05:20):
It's kind of like this very elite group of people.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
People were paying so much money to go to these concerts.
It was unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
Yeah, So the shows were two hundred and fifty four
dollars on average, but many people paid so much more
than that. Because of the resale market, there's obviously tiered seating,
so I mean, sky's the limit. I don't know exactly
who paid the most, but in tens of thousands of
dollars easily.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And I thought one thing that she did that was
so smart in these tours is so she had the
list of songs that she would play at each show,
and of course the fans quickly picked up on that
and it was published, you know, the set list, but
at each show she had us prize song or a
couple of surprise songs, and that could be anything from
her entire catalog of music. And so I thought that
(06:07):
was so smart because it added this element of surprise
to each show, and you know, I've heard people talking about,
you know, the different concerts that they went to this summer,
and the thing that people ask is they were like,
what was your surprise song?
Speaker 4 (06:20):
So, Devin, when you add it all up, what was
this giant spectacle of the Era's tour really worth?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
We estimated that so far the tours brought in over
seven hundred million dollars. That is based just on ticket sales.
That doesn't include merch, that doesn't include soft pretzels and
wings and all those other things that people buy at
the concert. That's really just based on ticket sales, based
on the average price of two hundred and fifty four dollars, and.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
So the actual value, sort of the knock on economic
effect is actually a whole lot larger than that.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, Bloomberg Economics estimates that just this North American lego,
the tour contributed four point three billion dollars to GDP,
which is tremendous. We saw hotel revenues at some of
these cities just go through the roof, you know, going
out to restaurants when they're traveling. It was a big
item for summer travel this year. You saw a lot
(07:18):
of the cities that really were seeing huge benefits of
her being there, and they wanted her there and were
able just to capitalize on that to really boost their
local economies.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
And one of the things you write which really stood
out was this idea that it caused such an economic
ripple wherever it went that the Federal Reserve started watching
these sales as an economic indicator.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah. I think that for them, it was a pretty
notable point that so many people had the money to
pay for these tickets. It's pretty incredible that people would
have enough money to go out and do that. It
was a sign of the consumer strength, and I think
that's what they were really looking for this summer, you know,
Taylor and in addition Beyonce and of course there's the
(08:03):
Barbe movie and Oppenheimer and some of these major blockbusters
that people were going out and spending on the summer,
and it really showed that people just felt secure enough
in their economic situations to go out and spend money
on these tours.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Devin, the Era's tour was kind of the big center
piece of traction that I think a lot of people see.
But you also write that behind the scenes, Taylor Swift
has been very savvy at building a business around her persona,
her music, and like the whole Taylor Swift ecosystem is
really what also drives this increase in her wealth she has.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Where we are looking backwards, you can really see how
savvy she's been from a pretty young age. I guess
one of the sort of watershed moments would be back
in twenty fifteen. I think it was Spotify was picking
up a lot of traction, was where most people returning
to to get their music, Spotify and other streaming services,
and she yanked all of her music off of it
(09:03):
in protest of what she said was unfair compensation, saying, basically,
this is my art. You're not putting a proper value
on my art.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
She tells Yahoo Music this morning. Spotify felt like an experiment,
and she's not willing to contribute her life's work to
an experiment. She says, I try to really remain open
minded about things because I do think it's important to
be a part of progress. But I think it's really
up for debate whether Spotify is actual progress.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
And she kind of had the power to do that,
and her fans were very happy to see her music
out elsewhere. It was off for a number of years
I think she went back on in twenty seventeen. Yeah, yeah,
And we don't know the terms of the deal, of course,
that she negotiated Spotify when she came back on, but
you can only surmise that she struck a better deal.
That would say was sort of a notable thing for one,
(09:52):
because obviously it probably worked out monetarily for her in
the end, but also you kind of shine a light
on this disproportion in the music industry between these streamers
kind of using their power to be the place where musicians,
if they want to get hurt and want to attract
new listeners, they really have to put their music there.
And yet they're paid a tiny, tiny, you know, fraction
(10:14):
of a penny per stream It's really not that much
money if you're not a huge star like a Taylor Swift.
So she kind of was like positioning herself as an
ally of musicians at large.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
And this is a really important point because it used
to be that musicians would make a lot of their
money from selling albums and then capes and then CDs,
but now it really is performing much more than streaming
or the sales of the actual music itself that drives
a musician's.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Profits, yes, exactly, which is tough. I mean, I think
about it. A viral musician, maybe I don't want a
tour that sounds really grueling, but if you really want
to make a lot of money, like you have to
be out performing because that's where the margin is.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
And yet you write that she's one of the few
musicians who is able to make money selling physical copies
of music when almost everybody else has just gone kind
of to digital.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, she's been able to sort of capitalize on that
fan base and has positioned a lot of her albums
and her record sales as this collector's item, and that's
pretty unique. I mean you're seeing, you know, records that
are sold out because she's advertised them to her fans,
and they view it as this sort of badge of
(11:28):
honor to have a physical copy of her music, not
just streaming it online.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
And music analyst I was talking to telling me she
even sells CDs. I mean, lots of musicians today, they
of course they still make physical music, they still put
out final they still put out CDs, but the difference
is Tailor's really selling them, and she probably is producing
much bigger quantities because they're going to move. I think
that's maybe some of her demographic is so young that
it's as like cool and retro as a record, a
(11:55):
vinyl record to some people. I don't know how they
play it.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
But when we come back Taylor Swift's fight to take
back control of her music. The other really big thing
that Taylor Swift did that you write about was to
take back control of her own music catalog.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Yeah. So how it works in music is often when
an artist signs with a record label, it's kind of
an artist for higher deal. Typically, as they say yes,
this record label is going to produce an album for
the artist. In return, they give the artist a big
chunk of money and the record label gets to keep
what they call usually the masters writes to the music,
which is the copyright to the actual music recording, the
(12:43):
actual music that they make, the songs that go on
an album the record label keeps. So that means if
the songs are played in the future in a public setting,
or if they're used in a commercial, or if they're
streamed on Spotify, they get a good, healthy royalty stream
down the road. So that was the deal Taylor Swift
had for her first six albums. It was for a
(13:03):
record label called Big Machine, which is based in Nashville,
and they really kind of took a chance on her.
I mean, she was fourteen years old when she signed
with them, and she was with them for six years,
and then she laughed. She basically went independent and the
record label was sold. The record label's biggest asset by
far was the masters to Taylor Swift's albums, and then
(13:24):
ultimately a few years later, Taylor Swift's masters itself was
sold again. And there was some drama to these sales
because it involved a former manager of hers she had
a tricky relationship with. But it meant that Taylor Swift
didn't have control of her masters. She basically didn't own
that music essentially anymore. She did have some rights to
it because she wrote the songs, but she didn't have
(13:46):
like the big meaty, really valuable rights that are known
as the masters. And she really was very public about
how upset she was that she lost control of these rights,
that it was her music and it was really hard
to see it sold twice, and that she said she
did not have an opportunity to buy those rights even
though she wanted to. That was really what she wanted
more than anything else. So she said what she was
(14:08):
going to do was re record all of those albums
and re record them so that she would own the rights. Now, now,
could you re record?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Oh yeah, might you do that?
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Oh yeah, that's a plan.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Yeah, absolutely, And that was a really bold thing to do.
First of all, it's very hard to like re record
a song and make it sound exactly like the original,
especially when you consider like she's thirty three now, she
was a teenager when she did some of these songs. Also,
I mean, it's risky. It basically means that, yes, she's
going to have the masters, but there's another version of
(14:42):
these songs out there, So how valuable are her master's
going to be? And that's kind of like where the
power of Taylor's fan base comes in. So she's four
albums in of the sixth total she's going to do,
and she's calling these new versions parentheses Taylor's version, And
it's not hard to imagine and that the fans, her
millions and millions of passionate fans, they want to listen
(15:04):
to Taylor's version because Taylor's done a really good job
of vilifying how it all went down with her first
six albums.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Taylor Swift keeps on making music history. Her latest album,
Speak Now. Taylor's Version debut at number one on Billboard's
Album charts this week. No big surprise here, right. That
gives her four albums in the top ten at the
same time.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
It's like Beatles ask.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Yeah, and Claire, a lot of these millions and millions
of passionate fans were buying Taylor's version also owned the
original version, so she's getting double the sales on some
of these albums.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible, you know. And she's
not just re recording the initial albums like an identical version.
She's also adding some of these songs that were cut,
So in some cases she's adding ten or more additional
songs that people haven't heard before to each album. So
it's almost like you're getting a better version of these
(16:00):
albums that you loved from you know, ten years ago,
and you're also getting new music from that era that
you hadn't heard before. In addition to that, obviously she's
used you know, records and other merch and there are
all these accessories you can get with the release of
a new re recording and the fan base of course
(16:21):
just will buy anything that she puts out.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
And Devin, when you had all that up, do we
know what her new Taylor's Version albums are Ashley worth?
Speaker 5 (16:32):
So it's conjecture for sure, Like everything, you know, that's
a private asset. But we have some interesting comparable transactions
to look at because it's been more common in the
past few years for musicians to sell their catalogs. Their
catalogs basically rights to their music that they own, so
they're going to have a piece to their music rights
and they've been selling it. So we've seen Bruce Springsteen
(16:55):
sold his catalog for five hundred and fifty million dollars
a couple of years ago. Just a couple of weeks ago,
Katie Perry sold hers for a reported two hundred and
twenty five million dollars. So what would Taylor Swifts be worth?
So we'd have to kind of look at her full
body of work and know that for the Taylor's Version,
there's kind of a duplicate set out there floating around,
which is going to dilute slightly. But I think that
(17:17):
Dilutioni's going to become, you know, almost not a thing
in the future because Taylor's version is going to dominate,
and she also has the albums that she recorded after
she left Big Machine, including Midnights and some others. So altogether,
I mean we got to range. Some people said it
could be worth up to a billion dollars her catalog,
like at the most sort of bullish. Other people said
(17:38):
or like, you know, four hundred five hundred million. So
I think four hundred five hundred million is what we
went for with for our official net worth analysis, with
sort of the caveat that it could be worth much more.
And one of the reasons that it could be worth
much more is that Taylor Swift a has just this
huge passionate fan base who are going to follow her
through her career. And b Taylor Swift is thirty three,
(18:00):
she has so much to mean. She's calling this tour
her eras tour, but I mean, there's so many more
eras to come.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It's funny whenever you know there's a report of a
Taylor Swift breakup or a new relationship, all the fans
just are thinking, oh, yeah, we've got lots of albums
to come from this. She'll take inspiration from this breakup
and you know, with her new relationship with NFL star
Travis Kelcey, all the fans are thinking, oh, yeah, we're
going to get new music from this era as well, Yeah,
(18:28):
some material.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
You're right that just the attention of that new relationship
has also had huge sales effects.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, so we saw just you know, this rumored relationship
between the two really drive interest in NFL games. There
was a twenty two percent increase in total audience that
the NFL saw just because people wanted to watch and
for a glimpse of Taylor. So it just really showed
her ability to drive consumer behavior and how people really
(19:01):
will flock to whatever she is doing, even if it's football.
You know, you saw more women have at least a
surface level interest in what was going on with these games.
Sales of his jersey increased four hundred percent because people
were suddenly you know, interested in that aspect because of
his relationship with Taylor. So it was pretty remarkable, and
(19:23):
I will say the NFL really did capitalize on that too.
I Mean, they were showing her constantly in some of
these games, and you know, I think they realize as
well that you know, this is a way for them
to boost their audience too, so it sort of was
a mutually beneficial partnership between the two of them.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
After the break the inner workings of Taylor Swift, Inc. Devin,
how do you go about trying to evaluate Taylor Swift's Well,
there's some stuff that's public, but a lot of the
stuff isn't public.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
So we came up with an estimate of one point
one billion dollars. But I cannot stress enough that that
is a conservative estimate because we try not to make
too many assumptions when we're doing these networth estimates, and
so you have to start with Taylor Swift is you
have to think about earnings because of course she's raking
in money from streaming and from concert ticket sales and
from music sales. So some of that information's public. I mean,
(20:23):
we know average ticket price, we know how many tickets
she's sold, how many tours she's done, because this is
her sixth tour. I believe you basically just have to
add up all that money. We also have to factor
in she's paying taxes. We have to factor in she
pays her team, her agents or attorneys. And then of
course there are some pieces we approach more like a
private asset. Her real estate is quite significant. She's built
(20:46):
up that and we can definitely put a value on that,
and also the music catalog, which is an increasingly really
important discrete asset for musicians. So there was the exercise
of trying to figure out how much would someone pay
for that if she were to sell. It is a small,
i think, tightly managed, little organization, but it's i'd say,
(21:07):
very serious about what it does. So one interesting thing
is that she has it looks like a number of LLC's.
It seems to be ten, and we think it's ten
because her father, Scott Swift, is a longtime registered investment
advisor with Merrill Lynch and he started in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania,
which is where Taylor Swift was from the family moved
(21:27):
to Nashville, and we've seen in these filings from the
Securities Exchange Commission, which if you're a registered investment advisor
you have to file with them that her dad also
helps oversee ten LLC's which are affiliated with different parts
of her business or holdings. Some of these LLC's oversea
properties she owns. She has some really lovely properties in
(21:50):
Beverly Hills and in Rhode Island. All together, they're worth
one hundred and ten million dollars. One of them manages
to private jets, one of them owns an airplane hangar.
One of them, which I think is a very important,
owns merchandising business, and obviously merchandising such an important part
of her business that brings in a huge amount of
revenue at these concerts and then also just through her
(22:11):
own website. He also helps oversee a copyright related business.
We don't have a lot of visibility into that, but
she has all of these really catchy, famous lyrics. They
are known to kind of police the use of these
lyrics and songs quite rigorously, and.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I think it really just speaks to how she's kept
it very in house. I mean, she's had her dad
really helped drive this. It also speaks to she's obviously
worked very hard for her career and has been tremendously successful.
But you know, she didn't start from absolutely nowhere. She
did have a little guidance on the way, and I
think that really set the foundation for her to be
(22:52):
so lucrative later on. You know, we've seen a lot
of musicians have MISSEDEPS, but because it's so tightly controlled,
and I think she had her dad to advise her
on a lot of these things that sort of helped
build the basis for this, you know, hugely profitable career
later on.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And another thing you write about is that she's not
just selling things to her fans, selling music, It's that
she has developed this way of speaking to them directly
through social media and other platforms in a way that
previous big artists were not able to do.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
Yeah, so Taylor Swift is a digital native. I mean
she grew up in a time where communicating on the
internet through social media was completely normal and it's what
you did. Being you know, a little bit confessional was
a very normal and appropriate way to engage with people.
And she has done a great job kind of finding
a voice that has really spoken to her fans, that
(23:48):
treads this line between being private enough but also open
and seeming like a friend. And I think that's really
like ingrained her into the hearts of so many people.
You know, it was just this is incredible, successful and
talented artists, but who also feels like someone I could
know and someone whose relationships I know, and I hear
about her heartache and I know about her backstory and
that has been really powerful and unique, Like you can't
(24:11):
really imagine Michael Jackson having that relationship with his fans
are definitely not Madonna, you know, really different kind of
megastar fan relationship.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I mean, I think she's tremendously relatable in a lot
of ways. I mean, we've seen her catalog her relationships
and breakups and all of these songs since she was sixteen,
and people feel like they've grown up with her through
these various life events that she's gone through and then
written about in her songs so transparently. So people really
do feel like they know her, which of course can
(24:44):
bet a ble edged sword, you know, people think they
know a lot about her life, and who knows what's
actually true and what's not. But regardless, people really do
feel like they have this inside look into her life
and what she's going through, and that just makes her
so much more relatable to them.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
And it's also sort of like a treasure hunt aspect
to it too, Like she has like clues what does
she call them.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Easter eggs? Easter eggs, Ye, yes, she has Easter eggs
of when she's releasing albums and things like that, she'll
put a little Easter egg in, like maybe a photo
she posts on Instagram, And you know, people have theories
that are probably ludicrous and just how elaborate they are,
but she definitely does purposely put some hints in her
social media timeline of things to come that she's going
(25:24):
to release or do well.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Speaking of things to come, what is next for Taylor Swift?
Where does she go from here?
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Writing the story, I kind of felt like we were
writing about someone sort of at the peak, like how
could it get crazier? But then she goes and releases
this movie, The Era's Concert Tour Movie, which in its
opening weekend did ninety two point eight million dollars in sales,
by far, the biggest concert movie ever, And so she
was kind of allowing, after all this buzz, all of
(25:54):
us poor people who didn't get to see it now
have a chance to go watch it. We could watch
it again and again, and even people who did go
to the concert are buying tickets because this movie is
a front row seat, so it's a totally different vantage point.
And I think she's just caught a really long career
ahead of her, and we've already seen this really interesting
transformation from country to pop country to really pop star,
(26:20):
so you know, she could take it in all sorts
of really different directions going forward.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
And Claire, the Eiris tour itself now is going on
the road again.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, she has a whole international leg of the tour
coming up and you know, likely going to do tremendous
ticket sales and merg sales there. So she has a
lot to go in terms of profits coming up just
from this upcoming leg of her tour.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
And I know at least one person who's going to
be seeing her in tour overseas.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, I'm actually going to France to see her. My
friend was able to get us tickets at a more
reasonable price than we could in the US, so it's
going to be really fun. And also I think to shows.
You know, I'm not the only person doing this. People
are traveling distances to see her shows internationally, so she
does have a lot to come just with this tour.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Take me with you, Devin Claire, thanks so much for
coming on the show. Thank you, thank you, thanks for
listening to us here at the Big Take. It's a
daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen,
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(27:34):
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supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Virgolino. Our
senior producer is Catherine Fink. Our producers are Michael Falero
and Moberra. Hil de Garcia is our engineer. Our original
music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm Wes Kasova. We'll
be back on Monday with another Big Take. Every great weekend,
(28:00):
the people better
Taylor Swift's Midnight breaking records, moving more than one million
units in a week, and she did it in three day.
Full Taylor takeover.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The phenomenon that is Tyler Swift. Another record. Taylor Swift's
Eras Tour is.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
On track to become the highest grossing tour of all time.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
Welcome to the Aeros Tour. Taylor Swift has been a
megastar for years now, but these days the pop singer
is absolutely unavoidable. Oh her hit songs, her record breaking
Eras concert tour, and a new blockbuster movie, not to
(00:41):
mention her approachable, down to earth persona. Have won heard
tens of millions of diehard fans.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
People come up to me and they'd be like, you're
you gonna just like do a show with like all
the albums in it, And I was like, Yeah, it's
gonna be called the Aeros Tour. See you there.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Bloomberg's Devin Pendleton and Claire Ballentine report that Swift has
also made astute business decisions and has a high tolerance
for taking risks. As a result. At age thirty three,
she's now reached a new milestone billionaire.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Never really have I ever seen an entertainer. So an
athlete or a musician or an actor really become a
billionaire based on their art alone. She's actually really done
it based on her music, and that's extraordinary and very
difficult to do.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It was all by design, because I'm a master of mine.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
I'm West Kasova today on the Big Take The Business
of being Taylor Swift. Devin Claire, Obviously this was like
the summer of Taylor Swift. But Devin, why did you
want to go find out how much she's worth?
Speaker 5 (02:06):
Taylor was everywhere this summer. She's been around for a while,
but all of a sudden, she was just this incredibly
epic moment. I don't think in my lifetime I've ever
been as close to living in a monoculture as this summer.
And of course, you know, as living I tabulate how
much people are worth, So of course we're all curious.
I'm thinking, like, how much is she made from this?
(02:27):
She's got to be a billionaire, And no, didn't seem
like anyone had declared she was a billionaire. But surely
the Era's tour, which is just this mega hit this summer,
has pushed her over the edge. So we got to
crunching some numbers and turned out that the Taylor Swift
economy universe was incredibly vast and way more complex than
I had any idea.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And I remember when we first started this project, didn't
you initially think she was almost a billionaire but not
quite so? Then it was really fun as the reporting
went on to see, oh, she's crossed that.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Mart Yeah, And it was exactly that, like the Aras tour.
We started out I think as a placeholder saying Taylor
Swift high nine figures and then all of a sudden thinking,
oh my gosh, no, she's done it. Like ring the gong,
we're here, and.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I really like to get into all the different things
that combine to really push her over the top. But
you also write that for a musician, even when as
fabulously successful as she is, reaching a billion dollars is
not easy and pretty unusual.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Yes, it really is. And I've been covering billionaires and
super rich people for sixteen years and never really have
I ever seen an entertainer, so an athlete, or a
musician or a actor really become a billionaire based on
their art alone. Like when they have done it, it's
usually been because of a business venture, a terrific fragrance
(03:51):
steel or dine, a property branding thing. But she's actually
really done it based on her music, and that's extraordinary
and very difficult to do.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Claire, we started talking about the Era's Tour, which is
the thing I think people are most aware of right now,
just how big was Eras for Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So the arastur came about post pandemic. There was so
much demand for concerts, and during the pandemic when everything
was shut down, she released four albums in twenty twenty
and twenty twenty one and then came out with a
brand new album, Midnight's Last Year, and she really capitalized
(04:31):
on this moment where people had this demand for live music.
And you know, she could have done this tour for
just her most recent albums, for you know, the ones
that hadn't gotten the whole you know, Rollout and a
world not under lockdown, but instead she sort of chose
to make this a celebration of her entire catalog and career,
(04:54):
and that sort of created this huge cultural moment that
we saw this summer.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Not only did she have all these co but these
concerts were in stadiums, massive stadiums like football stadiums, and
that is also remarkable because she packed these stadiums. I mean,
they were all sold out, and it's really just a
tiny kind of sliver of musicians who can fill a stadium.
(05:20):
It's kind of like this very elite group of people.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
People were paying so much money to go to these concerts.
It was unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
Yeah, So the shows were two hundred and fifty four
dollars on average, but many people paid so much more
than that. Because of the resale market, there's obviously tiered seating,
so I mean, sky's the limit. I don't know exactly
who paid the most, but in tens of thousands of
dollars easily.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And I thought one thing that she did that was
so smart in these tours is so she had the
list of songs that she would play at each show,
and of course the fans quickly picked up on that
and it was published, you know, the set list, but
at each show she had us prize song or a
couple of surprise songs, and that could be anything from
her entire catalog of music. And so I thought that
(06:07):
was so smart because it added this element of surprise
to each show, and you know, I've heard people talking about,
you know, the different concerts that they went to this summer,
and the thing that people ask is they were like,
what was your surprise song?
Speaker 4 (06:20):
So, Devin, when you add it all up, what was
this giant spectacle of the Era's tour really worth?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
We estimated that so far the tours brought in over
seven hundred million dollars. That is based just on ticket sales.
That doesn't include merch, that doesn't include soft pretzels and
wings and all those other things that people buy at
the concert. That's really just based on ticket sales, based
on the average price of two hundred and fifty four dollars, and.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
So the actual value, sort of the knock on economic
effect is actually a whole lot larger than that.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, Bloomberg Economics estimates that just this North American lego,
the tour contributed four point three billion dollars to GDP,
which is tremendous. We saw hotel revenues at some of
these cities just go through the roof, you know, going
out to restaurants when they're traveling. It was a big
item for summer travel this year. You saw a lot
(07:18):
of the cities that really were seeing huge benefits of
her being there, and they wanted her there and were
able just to capitalize on that to really boost their
local economies.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
And one of the things you write which really stood
out was this idea that it caused such an economic
ripple wherever it went that the Federal Reserve started watching
these sales as an economic indicator.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah. I think that for them, it was a pretty
notable point that so many people had the money to
pay for these tickets. It's pretty incredible that people would
have enough money to go out and do that. It
was a sign of the consumer strength, and I think
that's what they were really looking for this summer, you know,
Taylor and in addition Beyonce and of course there's the
(08:03):
Barbe movie and Oppenheimer and some of these major blockbusters
that people were going out and spending on the summer,
and it really showed that people just felt secure enough
in their economic situations to go out and spend money
on these tours.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Devin, the Era's tour was kind of the big center
piece of traction that I think a lot of people see.
But you also write that behind the scenes, Taylor Swift
has been very savvy at building a business around her persona,
her music, and like the whole Taylor Swift ecosystem is
really what also drives this increase in her wealth she has.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Where we are looking backwards, you can really see how
savvy she's been from a pretty young age. I guess
one of the sort of watershed moments would be back
in twenty fifteen. I think it was Spotify was picking
up a lot of traction, was where most people returning
to to get their music, Spotify and other streaming services,
and she yanked all of her music off of it
(09:03):
in protest of what she said was unfair compensation, saying, basically,
this is my art. You're not putting a proper value
on my art.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
She tells Yahoo Music this morning. Spotify felt like an experiment,
and she's not willing to contribute her life's work to
an experiment. She says, I try to really remain open
minded about things because I do think it's important to
be a part of progress. But I think it's really
up for debate whether Spotify is actual progress.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
And she kind of had the power to do that,
and her fans were very happy to see her music
out elsewhere. It was off for a number of years
I think she went back on in twenty seventeen. Yeah, yeah,
And we don't know the terms of the deal, of course,
that she negotiated Spotify when she came back on, but
you can only surmise that she struck a better deal.
That would say was sort of a notable thing for one,
(09:52):
because obviously it probably worked out monetarily for her in
the end, but also you kind of shine a light
on this disproportion in the music industry between these streamers
kind of using their power to be the place where musicians,
if they want to get hurt and want to attract
new listeners, they really have to put their music there.
And yet they're paid a tiny, tiny, you know, fraction
(10:14):
of a penny per stream It's really not that much
money if you're not a huge star like a Taylor Swift.
So she kind of was like positioning herself as an
ally of musicians at large.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
And this is a really important point because it used
to be that musicians would make a lot of their
money from selling albums and then capes and then CDs,
but now it really is performing much more than streaming
or the sales of the actual music itself that drives
a musician's.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Profits, yes, exactly, which is tough. I mean, I think
about it. A viral musician, maybe I don't want a
tour that sounds really grueling, but if you really want
to make a lot of money, like you have to
be out performing because that's where the margin is.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
And yet you write that she's one of the few
musicians who is able to make money selling physical copies
of music when almost everybody else has just gone kind
of to digital.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, she's been able to sort of capitalize on that
fan base and has positioned a lot of her albums
and her record sales as this collector's item, and that's
pretty unique. I mean you're seeing, you know, records that
are sold out because she's advertised them to her fans,
and they view it as this sort of badge of
(11:28):
honor to have a physical copy of her music, not
just streaming it online.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
And music analyst I was talking to telling me she
even sells CDs. I mean, lots of musicians today, they
of course they still make physical music, they still put
out final they still put out CDs, but the difference
is Tailor's really selling them, and she probably is producing
much bigger quantities because they're going to move. I think
that's maybe some of her demographic is so young that
it's as like cool and retro as a record, a
(11:55):
vinyl record to some people. I don't know how they
play it.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
But when we come back Taylor Swift's fight to take
back control of her music. The other really big thing
that Taylor Swift did that you write about was to
take back control of her own music catalog.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Yeah. So how it works in music is often when
an artist signs with a record label, it's kind of
an artist for higher deal. Typically, as they say yes,
this record label is going to produce an album for
the artist. In return, they give the artist a big
chunk of money and the record label gets to keep
what they call usually the masters writes to the music,
which is the copyright to the actual music recording, the
(12:43):
actual music that they make, the songs that go on
an album the record label keeps. So that means if
the songs are played in the future in a public setting,
or if they're used in a commercial, or if they're
streamed on Spotify, they get a good, healthy royalty stream
down the road. So that was the deal Taylor Swift
had for her first six albums. It was for a
(13:03):
record label called Big Machine, which is based in Nashville,
and they really kind of took a chance on her.
I mean, she was fourteen years old when she signed
with them, and she was with them for six years,
and then she laughed. She basically went independent and the
record label was sold. The record label's biggest asset by
far was the masters to Taylor Swift's albums, and then
(13:24):
ultimately a few years later, Taylor Swift's masters itself was
sold again. And there was some drama to these sales
because it involved a former manager of hers she had
a tricky relationship with. But it meant that Taylor Swift
didn't have control of her masters. She basically didn't own
that music essentially anymore. She did have some rights to
it because she wrote the songs, but she didn't have
(13:46):
like the big meaty, really valuable rights that are known
as the masters. And she really was very public about
how upset she was that she lost control of these rights,
that it was her music and it was really hard
to see it sold twice, and that she said she
did not have an opportunity to buy those rights even
though she wanted to. That was really what she wanted
more than anything else. So she said what she was
(14:08):
going to do was re record all of those albums
and re record them so that she would own the rights. Now, now,
could you re record?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Oh yeah, might you do that?
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Oh yeah, that's a plan.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Yeah, absolutely, And that was a really bold thing to do.
First of all, it's very hard to like re record
a song and make it sound exactly like the original,
especially when you consider like she's thirty three now, she
was a teenager when she did some of these songs. Also,
I mean, it's risky. It basically means that, yes, she's
going to have the masters, but there's another version of
(14:42):
these songs out there, So how valuable are her master's
going to be? And that's kind of like where the
power of Taylor's fan base comes in. So she's four
albums in of the sixth total she's going to do,
and she's calling these new versions parentheses Taylor's version, And
it's not hard to imagine and that the fans, her
millions and millions of passionate fans, they want to listen
(15:04):
to Taylor's version because Taylor's done a really good job
of vilifying how it all went down with her first
six albums.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Taylor Swift keeps on making music history. Her latest album,
Speak Now. Taylor's Version debut at number one on Billboard's
Album charts this week. No big surprise here, right. That
gives her four albums in the top ten at the
same time.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
It's like Beatles ask.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Yeah, and Claire, a lot of these millions and millions
of passionate fans were buying Taylor's version also owned the
original version, so she's getting double the sales on some
of these albums.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible, you know. And she's
not just re recording the initial albums like an identical version.
She's also adding some of these songs that were cut,
So in some cases she's adding ten or more additional
songs that people haven't heard before to each album. So
it's almost like you're getting a better version of these
(16:00):
albums that you loved from you know, ten years ago,
and you're also getting new music from that era that
you hadn't heard before. In addition to that, obviously she's
used you know, records and other merch and there are
all these accessories you can get with the release of
a new re recording and the fan base of course
(16:21):
just will buy anything that she puts out.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
And Devin, when you had all that up, do we
know what her new Taylor's Version albums are Ashley worth?
Speaker 5 (16:32):
So it's conjecture for sure, Like everything, you know, that's
a private asset. But we have some interesting comparable transactions
to look at because it's been more common in the
past few years for musicians to sell their catalogs. Their
catalogs basically rights to their music that they own, so
they're going to have a piece to their music rights
and they've been selling it. So we've seen Bruce Springsteen
(16:55):
sold his catalog for five hundred and fifty million dollars
a couple of years ago. Just a couple of weeks ago,
Katie Perry sold hers for a reported two hundred and
twenty five million dollars. So what would Taylor Swifts be worth?
So we'd have to kind of look at her full
body of work and know that for the Taylor's Version,
there's kind of a duplicate set out there floating around,
which is going to dilute slightly. But I think that
(17:17):
Dilutioni's going to become, you know, almost not a thing
in the future because Taylor's version is going to dominate,
and she also has the albums that she recorded after
she left Big Machine, including Midnights and some others. So altogether,
I mean we got to range. Some people said it
could be worth up to a billion dollars her catalog,
like at the most sort of bullish. Other people said
(17:38):
or like, you know, four hundred five hundred million. So
I think four hundred five hundred million is what we
went for with for our official net worth analysis, with
sort of the caveat that it could be worth much more.
And one of the reasons that it could be worth
much more is that Taylor Swift a has just this
huge passionate fan base who are going to follow her
through her career. And b Taylor Swift is thirty three,
(18:00):
she has so much to mean. She's calling this tour
her eras tour, but I mean, there's so many more
eras to come.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It's funny whenever you know there's a report of a
Taylor Swift breakup or a new relationship, all the fans
just are thinking, oh, yeah, we've got lots of albums
to come from this. She'll take inspiration from this breakup
and you know, with her new relationship with NFL star
Travis Kelcey, all the fans are thinking, oh, yeah, we're
going to get new music from this era as well, Yeah,
(18:28):
some material.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
You're right that just the attention of that new relationship
has also had huge sales effects.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, so we saw just you know, this rumored relationship
between the two really drive interest in NFL games. There
was a twenty two percent increase in total audience that
the NFL saw just because people wanted to watch and
for a glimpse of Taylor. So it just really showed
her ability to drive consumer behavior and how people really
(19:01):
will flock to whatever she is doing, even if it's football.
You know, you saw more women have at least a
surface level interest in what was going on with these games.
Sales of his jersey increased four hundred percent because people
were suddenly you know, interested in that aspect because of
his relationship with Taylor. So it was pretty remarkable, and
(19:23):
I will say the NFL really did capitalize on that too.
I Mean, they were showing her constantly in some of
these games, and you know, I think they realize as
well that you know, this is a way for them
to boost their audience too, so it sort of was
a mutually beneficial partnership between the two of them.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
After the break the inner workings of Taylor Swift, Inc. Devin,
how do you go about trying to evaluate Taylor Swift's Well,
there's some stuff that's public, but a lot of the
stuff isn't public.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
So we came up with an estimate of one point
one billion dollars. But I cannot stress enough that that
is a conservative estimate because we try not to make
too many assumptions when we're doing these networth estimates, and
so you have to start with Taylor Swift is you
have to think about earnings because of course she's raking
in money from streaming and from concert ticket sales and
from music sales. So some of that information's public. I mean,
(20:23):
we know average ticket price, we know how many tickets
she's sold, how many tours she's done, because this is
her sixth tour. I believe you basically just have to
add up all that money. We also have to factor
in she's paying taxes. We have to factor in she
pays her team, her agents or attorneys. And then of
course there are some pieces we approach more like a
private asset. Her real estate is quite significant. She's built
(20:46):
up that and we can definitely put a value on that,
and also the music catalog, which is an increasingly really
important discrete asset for musicians. So there was the exercise
of trying to figure out how much would someone pay
for that if she were to sell. It is a small,
i think, tightly managed, little organization, but it's i'd say,
(21:07):
very serious about what it does. So one interesting thing
is that she has it looks like a number of LLC's.
It seems to be ten, and we think it's ten
because her father, Scott Swift, is a longtime registered investment
advisor with Merrill Lynch and he started in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania,
which is where Taylor Swift was from the family moved
(21:27):
to Nashville, and we've seen in these filings from the
Securities Exchange Commission, which if you're a registered investment advisor
you have to file with them that her dad also
helps oversee ten LLC's which are affiliated with different parts
of her business or holdings. Some of these LLC's oversea
properties she owns. She has some really lovely properties in
(21:50):
Beverly Hills and in Rhode Island. All together, they're worth
one hundred and ten million dollars. One of them manages
to private jets, one of them owns an airplane hangar.
One of them, which I think is a very important,
owns merchandising business, and obviously merchandising such an important part
of her business that brings in a huge amount of
revenue at these concerts and then also just through her
(22:11):
own website. He also helps oversee a copyright related business.
We don't have a lot of visibility into that, but
she has all of these really catchy, famous lyrics. They
are known to kind of police the use of these
lyrics and songs quite rigorously, and.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I think it really just speaks to how she's kept
it very in house. I mean, she's had her dad
really helped drive this. It also speaks to she's obviously
worked very hard for her career and has been tremendously successful.
But you know, she didn't start from absolutely nowhere. She
did have a little guidance on the way, and I
think that really set the foundation for her to be
(22:52):
so lucrative later on. You know, we've seen a lot
of musicians have MISSEDEPS, but because it's so tightly controlled,
and I think she had her dad to advise her
on a lot of these things that sort of helped
build the basis for this, you know, hugely profitable career
later on.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And another thing you write about is that she's not
just selling things to her fans, selling music, It's that
she has developed this way of speaking to them directly
through social media and other platforms in a way that
previous big artists were not able to do.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
Yeah, so Taylor Swift is a digital native. I mean
she grew up in a time where communicating on the
internet through social media was completely normal and it's what
you did. Being you know, a little bit confessional was
a very normal and appropriate way to engage with people.
And she has done a great job kind of finding
a voice that has really spoken to her fans, that
(23:48):
treads this line between being private enough but also open
and seeming like a friend. And I think that's really
like ingrained her into the hearts of so many people.
You know, it was just this is incredible, successful and
talented artists, but who also feels like someone I could
know and someone whose relationships I know, and I hear
about her heartache and I know about her backstory and
that has been really powerful and unique, Like you can't
(24:11):
really imagine Michael Jackson having that relationship with his fans
are definitely not Madonna, you know, really different kind of
megastar fan relationship.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I mean, I think she's tremendously relatable in a lot
of ways. I mean, we've seen her catalog her relationships
and breakups and all of these songs since she was sixteen,
and people feel like they've grown up with her through
these various life events that she's gone through and then
written about in her songs so transparently. So people really
do feel like they know her, which of course can
(24:44):
bet a ble edged sword, you know, people think they
know a lot about her life, and who knows what's
actually true and what's not. But regardless, people really do
feel like they have this inside look into her life
and what she's going through, and that just makes her
so much more relatable to them.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
And it's also sort of like a treasure hunt aspect
to it too, Like she has like clues what does
she call them.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Easter eggs? Easter eggs, Ye, yes, she has Easter eggs
of when she's releasing albums and things like that, she'll
put a little Easter egg in, like maybe a photo
she posts on Instagram, And you know, people have theories
that are probably ludicrous and just how elaborate they are,
but she definitely does purposely put some hints in her
social media timeline of things to come that she's going
(25:24):
to release or do well.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Speaking of things to come, what is next for Taylor Swift?
Where does she go from here?
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Writing the story, I kind of felt like we were
writing about someone sort of at the peak, like how
could it get crazier? But then she goes and releases
this movie, The Era's Concert Tour Movie, which in its
opening weekend did ninety two point eight million dollars in sales,
by far, the biggest concert movie ever, And so she
was kind of allowing, after all this buzz, all of
(25:54):
us poor people who didn't get to see it now
have a chance to go watch it. We could watch
it again and again, and even people who did go
to the concert are buying tickets because this movie is
a front row seat, so it's a totally different vantage point.
And I think she's just caught a really long career
ahead of her, and we've already seen this really interesting
transformation from country to pop country to really pop star,
(26:20):
so you know, she could take it in all sorts
of really different directions going forward.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
And Claire, the Eiris tour itself now is going on
the road again.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, she has a whole international leg of the tour
coming up and you know, likely going to do tremendous
ticket sales and merg sales there. So she has a
lot to go in terms of profits coming up just
from this upcoming leg of her tour.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
And I know at least one person who's going to
be seeing her in tour overseas.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, I'm actually going to France to see her. My
friend was able to get us tickets at a more
reasonable price than we could in the US, so it's
going to be really fun. And also I think to shows.
You know, I'm not the only person doing this. People
are traveling distances to see her shows internationally, so she
does have a lot to come just with this tour.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Take me with you, Devin Claire, thanks so much for
coming on the show. Thank you, thank you, thanks for
listening to us here at the Big Take. It's a
daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen,
and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions
(27:34):
or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot Net. The
supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Virgolino. Our
senior producer is Catherine Fink. Our producers are Michael Falero
and Moberra. Hil de Garcia is our engineer. Our original
music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm Wes Kasova. We'll
be back on Monday with another Big Take. Every great weekend,
(28:00):
the people better
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
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Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.