- [Narrator] Taylor Swift, the singer with a big reputation
in the music industry, is according to Forbes,
worth an estimated $570 million.
And with Eras forecast to become the highest grossing tour
of all time,
the singer could considerably add to her net worth.
(crowd cheering)
So how did she get here?
(crowd screaming)
- 53% of the adults
in the United States considered themselves
to be Taylor Swift fans
and 16% considered themselves to be avid Swifties.
- [Narrator] For Swift, that translates into record sales,
record-breaking record sales.
Her 10th studio album, "Midnights,"
released in October 2022,
sold 1.6 million albums in its first week
according to Universal Music.
That makes her the one
and only artist to ever have five albums sell
over one million copies in its first week.
The resurgence of vinyl records has also played a role.
In 2022, vinyls outsold CDs for the first time since 1987.
Taylor's album "Midnights" sold 575,000 vinyls
in its first week.
- A typical stream generates well under a penny in revenue
from the streaming service that the stream originates on.
Somewhere between 1/4 and 3/4 of a penny for all royaltors
and all participants in that income stream.
When you sell a vinyl record today,
which at retail costs 20 to $30,
well, you can imagine that the numbers are much better
on a per unit basis, certainly than a stream.
- [Narrator] Still, streaming has significantly contributed
to Taylor's wealth.
According to Universal,
the singer has 36.6 billion combined streams of her music
but there was a time when streaming services
and Taylor were on rocky ground.
From 2014 to 2017, Swift boycotted Spotify removing all
of her music from the platform.
In 2015, Swift wrote an open letter
to Apple objecting to the company's decision
to not pay artists streaming royalties
during the three-month Apple Music trial period.
- Apple to their credit, came back and said, you're right.
We've changed our mind about this
and we will pay artists for the use of music
during the trial period.
- [Narrator] When her album "Midnights" released,
it became Spotify's most streamed album
in a single day and also broke the record
for the most streamed artist in a single day on Spotify.
Money from music streams
and sales doesn't just go to the artist.
In 2022, Swift generated close
to 3% of Universal Music's annual revenue, or $230 million
in sales for the biggest music label in the world
according to JPMorgan.
- In every piece of music that you hear,
there are two copyrights involved.
The copyright in the underlying musical composition,
the song itself.
That's where songwriters and music publishers live.
Once the song is made into a sound recording,
that's usually where the record company
and the performer live.
- [Narrator] Typically, record labels own the masters
of a song or the original recording.
That means the labels keep the fee for master recording use
every time a song is streamed, performed on TV
or played in a movie.
In 2019, Scooter Braun managing Ithaca Holdings
bought Big Machine Label Group,
which owned the masters to her recordings.
He then spun off her masters.
- After the catalog sale had happened,
Taylor would still be a royalty participant
as the artist who made the records, but the vast majority
of that income would be going to the owner
of the catalog, Ithaca Holdings.
- [Narrator] In 2018, Swift revealed on Instagram
that she signed with Republic Records,
a label under Universal Music Group.
As part of the deal,
Swift said she would own her future master recordings
and her contract with her previous home,
Big Machine Label Group,
allowed her to rerecord her old songs.
- In most traditional artists agreements,
most artists are barred for a really long period
of time from rerecording their original works.
Taylor, as her career became the fantastic juggernaut
that it did,
gained a tremendous amount of leverage in the deals
that she was able to make while still on Big Machine.
I'm not sure if the provisions allowed for her to rerecord
within a very short period of time after a sale or not
but we do know that the period was very truncated, much more
than it normally is for the conventional artist deal.
- [Narrator] So far, Swift has re-released
her albums "Fearless" and "Red" as Taylor's version,
both making it
to the top of Billboard charts and selling more album units
in the first week than their original releases.
For any sales of these, Swift receives the artist
and master's share of the song revenue.
- It was to Taylor's benefit
to be able to maximize her income
and give the fans, you know, new versions
of the songs that they knew and loved so much
and have the income come directly to her
or to the administrators
who are managing the new records for her.
- [Narrator] Then of course, there are Taylor Swift's tours.
(upbeat music)
- When the Taylor tour went on sale,
it broke the internet and it broke Ticketmaster's system.
There are very few artists
in the world who face virtually infinite demand
for seats to their concerts at almost any price.
When Ticketmaster put the Taylor Swift tour on sale,
essentially there were three and a half billion requests
for one and a half million seats.
- [Narrator] Tours are a huge money maker for artists.
- 85 or 90% or more of the face value of the ticket goes
to pay the artist, but not just the artist themselves.
I mean, to put a big tour on the road is really expensive
so it pays for the artist and everyone in the artist's camp
from everybody you see on stage to the people
who move the equipment in and out, to the people
who operate the sound and lights to the people
who drive the trucks and fly the planes around
and negotiate the deals.
But overwhelmingly, most of what the ticket price goes to
is to pay for the artist
- [Narrator] And the Eras tour
could gross $728 million according
to concert data tracker Pollstar, which also predicts
that the tour could set the record
for the highest grossing tour in a calendar year.
So what keeps Taylor Swift fans in love with her music?
- Hundreds of millions of people
around the world relate to her music
in a powerful and profound and utterly relatable way.
We're talking about a music creator
and performer whose music changes the lives
of the people who relate so closely to it.
That makes Taylor utterly unique
in the constellation of music makers, well known
and less well known over the last 10 years in particular.
(upbeat music)