How to Run a Business Like Taylor Swift
Real lessons from the mastermind Pop Star Goddess, even for those of us who are not planning to break Ticketmaster.
Nobody has mastered the business side of pop stardom like Taylor Swift. Since the beginning of her career, she’s instinctively known how to connect deeply with her fans—through her confessional music, as a genuine presence on social media, and even, at times, inviting fans over to listen to her new records with her or paying off fans’ student loans. From there, she built an empire that runs on fans’ ardor for her: They relish in collecting multiple versions of the same album, buy up any and all themed merch, famously broke Ticketmaster while trying to get tickets to her Eras Tour, and also swarmed movie theaters to enjoy the film version of that concert.
I’m hardly the only one to notice her business acumen. No less than The Wall Street Journal published a feature called “How to Succeed in Business Like Taylor Swift,” pitching tips drawn from her career at high-level management types. Of all the brilliant money-making decisions she’s made, perhaps none is as remarkable as her quest to re-record her albums after her original record company, Big Machine, was purchased by music manager Scooter Braun, including the masters of Swift’s first six albums. Big Machine refused her pleas to purchase the masters, which are essentially rights to the recordings themselves, unless she renewed her contract with them. She didn’t—instead, she went nuclear, revealing the dispute publicly and then re-recording the albums one-by-one so that she could own them. Her fans are so loyal that they re-purchased them, sending them up the charts again and keeping her nearly constantly in the industry news cycle. (I personally feel bad, like actually embarrassed, if I realize I’ve been accidentally listening to an original version of a song that’s been “Taylor’s Version”-ed, as if I’ve purchased something made by exploited workers. That’s powerful PR.)
In my 2020 book Pop Star Goddesses, which I have been revisiting lately, I named her the Goddess of Demanding Your Worth. But it turns out that’s only part of her business mastery. Here are some of the further MBA-level lessons she’s shown us in the last four years as she reached total cultural domination, which a lot of us can apply to our own lives—I have!—even if it’s at a slightly smaller scale.
Find new ways to make money off of what you’ve already done.
She’s done her wildly successful re-releases, as well as vinyls, vinlys with a few extra tracks, digital versions with a few extra tracks, vinyls with new covers, vinyls with collectible covers, the permutations go on. Few of us have this much agency in our own careers, but is there something in your computer that could be turned into a course, an e-book, or even social media content (which might not get you money, but might get you followers)? She has used her (Taylor’s Version) re-recordings not only to turn more profits but also to dominate news cycles and the charts all over again. It’s worth considering what you’ve got lying around that could do you further good. A key part of Swift’s strategy overall is that she’s not the least bit ashamed to make money off of her art, which puts her ahead of a lot of us who have been trained to believe we should be doing it only for the love of it. She obviously loves what she does, but has no qualms about loving it and charging for her services. My revisiting of my older books recently on social media and here, at this exact moment, was inspired by this!
Celebrate your eras.
We all have eras, even if we’re not global pop stars. All of Swift’s eras come out of genuine feelings, but they also mark distinct times in her life that her fans can relate to. Even if you’re not on what seems like a never-ending world tour, you can celebrate the phases you’ve come through without denigrating any of them, just like Swift does every night she performs on the Eras Tour. This also makes her, and us, able to see her entire career arc as a body of work that refers back to itself and makes a cohesive whole, rather than a series of unrelated stops and starts.
Speaking of eras … reinvention is a good thing.
Obviously she didn’t originate this idea; if anyone did, it was Madonna. But Swift has seamlessly integrated the idea of “eras” into her core identity in a way that makes it feel natural, rather than a grab for attention—which it also is, and that’s okay. Swift had the opportunity to do this in a way that Madonna didn’t, not only because Madonna paved the way, but also because Swift started out as a romance-obsessed teenager and was all but forced to evolve before our eyes or perish as a pop star. She found a way to do it all like no one else has yet masterminded.
Also: Don’t miss our “How to Have a Folklore Fall” post at Ministry of Pop Culture for tips on getting whimsical, witchy, and cozy this season.