Exactly 17 years (and two days) ago, a 16-year-old girl named Taylor Allison Swift released her first album to the world. Taylor Swift had her name in the title and her signature on all eleven of her songs. A mix of country and teen pop, it quickly became a success with sales, audiences and critics. It sold 40,000 copies in one week, went straight to number 19 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums two weeks later, went seven times platinum and was nominated for Best Album by the Academy of Country Music. A lot has happened since then for this girl, who is now a global superstar with 10 albums to her name, the world’s most successful tour (made into a movie) and worldwide success. But most importantly, millions and millions of dollars rained down. So many that she became one of the few singers in the world to achieve billionaire status.
This was confirmed by the renowned business magazine Bloomberg, which dedicated a detailed and well-documented report to the singer, in which it calculated, according to the most conservative calculations, that the singer already has a net worth of more than 1,000 million dollars (946.7 million US dollars ) has millions of euros). They affirm that their great tour “The Eras Tour”, with which they have given fifty concerts in the USA and Mexico and which will take them halfway around the world with almost 100 more concerts until November 2024, is the fundamental impetus for this upswing of theirs Finance was . .
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The publication estimates these gains based only on verifiable economic data; That is, it is very likely that there are more profits in investments that they have not been able to trace or in companies that are unknown, as well as in valuable items such as clothing (on her tour she wears dresses that cost more than $20,000 cost dollars). , jewelry or vehicles. For the calculation, they added several components: the value of his catalog, that is, the music that he has re-released since 2019 – when the music he released began to belong to him and when he began to re-record his first albums he lost at the hands of his first manager is estimated to be around $400 million; along with their concerts (tickets and merchandising, 370 million); added to streaming views on YouTube and Spotify (120 million); to his five houses (approx. 110 million); and the copyright from the sales of his music (80 million). That already adds up to $1.08 billion.
Taylor Swift inaugurated the New York Christmas lights at Rockefeller Center in November 2007, shortly before her 18th birthday. George Napolitano (Getty Images)
And Swift still has nearly two-thirds of her tour left, which means more revenue. He already has the money from ticket sales (which have all been sold for months), but he still has the merchandising, at not exactly popular prices, with cotton T-shirts for $45 and sweatshirts for $75. as has happened on half a dozen occasions. According to Variety, 2.4 million tickets were sold on the first day of ticket sales, then only for the United States, breaking a record that Robbie Williams had held since 2005. Bloomberg estimates that the tour has already sold more than $700 million in tickets, but Swift, after paying the appropriate taxes, his staging and his team (to whom he has given more than $50 million in bonuses), would keep some more than the half. Add to this the 164 million dollars that his concert shown in theaters brought in in two weeks (124 in the first). In addition, it has no production companies or platforms, only theaters as distributors, so the income for the artist is almost clean.
Of his albums, 1989 is the best-selling and precisely this morning, at midnight on the 27th, he releases his own re-recorded version of 1989, with five new songs, a handful of formats (collectible CDs, vinyl, cassettes…). .) and lots more merchandising for sale. He does it after the hype moment of the tour. During the pandemic in 2020, Swift seized the opportunity and released two albums when music consumption from home was at its peak. A third came in 2022. And now, with everyone determined to enjoy great experiences after the global lockdown, she knows how to capitalize on her music with a spectacular career-long tour with ten set changes and three long hours duration, where the average ticket price is about 250 dollars, and which is bought by a multi-generational audience made up mostly of women, of those who listen to it now, but also of the girls who heard it 15 years ago , and their daughters.
Taylor Swift, during her “The Eras Tour” concert in Arlington, Texas, March 2023.Getty Images
The value of the Pennsylvania singer’s catalog was 400 million dollars in 2019, surpassed only by that of Bruce Springsteen, which was sold almost two years ago for 550 million, then 442 million euros. But according to Bloomberg, it could go up to a billion, because that’s in addition to the royalties, his new albums since then (four: Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Midnights), the current 1989 release and the two albums he has yet to re-record (Taylor Swift and Reputation). Warner bought David Bowie’s for 250 million and Justin Bieber sold his this year for 200. A far cry from the singer’s numbers.
Swift wasn’t the only one who benefited from her tour. The same applies to the cities it passed through. It is estimated that he has contributed up to 4.3 billion dollars (4,070 in euros) to the US economy and he still has nine shows in his country. In Los Angeles alone, he left around $150 million in six nights, the Los Angeles Times reported. According to estimates by the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce, his four concerts in the city last August, the first of his career in Mexico and Latin America, along with the city marathon, cost around 1,033 million pesos (the equivalent of $61.5 million). (time approx. 58.2 million euros).
In these 17 years of her career, the winner of 12 Grammy Awards has known how to surround herself well with a small but loyal team that has become part of her success. Her parents, Andrea and Scott, remain very close to her. Even in their shops. Her father’s name is associated with ten companies that manage his daughter’s music, rights, businesses and assets. The publication claims that they also manage all of their real estate assets, as well as their own tour bus and two private jets. And all this with half a life on stage, without turning 34 and with an empire that still has many years ahead of it and many opportunities to continue to grow.