Latest / The Innovation Show / Behind the Music: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift Part 2 with Kevin Evers

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Behind the Music: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift Part 2 with Kevin Evers · The Innovation Show

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Come back to part two of this brilliant book.
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It's there behind me on the shelf.
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There's nothing like this.
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The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.
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We're joined once again by the author of that book, Kevin
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Evers, welcome back to the show.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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It's great to have you, man.
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I have a bone to pick with you.
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I've gone in so much trouble because my wife keeps walking in and I'm listening
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to Taylor Swift or listening to speeches by Taylor Swift or Grammy Awards or
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speeches, et cetera, et cetera, and she's like going, have you become a swifty.
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And I was like, I think I have thanks to this guy, Kevin Evers.
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same thing happened to me.
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You know, I wasn't the, I wasn't a huge Taylor Swift fan when I,
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when I started this, and, uh.
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I spent three years just doing so much research and only
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listening to Taylor Swift music.
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So my wife was also confused.
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She's like, I thought your favorite band was Radiohead.
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How have you, why are you suddenly so into Taylor Swift?
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But she's also become a swifty, and my, my daughter's a swifty too, so
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it's become a, a whole family affair.
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We haven't converted my son yet, but maybe someday.
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Maybe someday, man, because it doesn't seem like she's finished any day soon.
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But let's pick up we, we said we'd start at the reinvention, so this is
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where she covers up her disappointment of losing Album of the Year to a
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brilliant album, which was DAFT Punk.
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This was her Red album, which was released in 2012.
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And what's interesting, what's really interesting about the Red Album is
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she really started to move into pop but still stayed in the country world.
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So she was straddling two different genres and she was dominating both genres.
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She was the most played artist on country radio.
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She was country music Starling.
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with the songs that she made with Max Martin, the Uber producer, she
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started with, she realized her first number one hits, she'd never had number
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one, pure number one hits before.
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And those were played on pop radio.
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And so she gets to the Grammys and Taylor's always been really,
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really competitive and she wants to win awards or at least she really
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seems like she wants to win awards and Right, she loses to DAF Punk.
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And this becomes like a pretty critical moment in her career
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because she took that loss.
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seriously.
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And it was that night where she said, I'm making pure pop music.
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I am not.
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I'm not chasing two rabbits anymore.
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I'm not gonna do a, you know, 10 country songs and four pop songs.
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I'm going full on pop.
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And that decision really led her to a pretty massive transformation.
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And as we know, most transformations and companies tend to fail.
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And you could say the same thing about the arts too.
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This is a pretty major business decision that she was trying to make.
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But just going pure pop, she was leaving all those relationships
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and country music behind.
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And country music had really embraced her.
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And this was a really risky decision on her part, but she managed to pull it off.
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The really interesting thing is when you think about somebody reinventing
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themselves, say it was you or I, it's easy because it's just us.
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Maybe our family are involved in some way.
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But what you say here, Taylor Swift at this stage had become a machine,
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which meant that producers, promoters, engineers, all of them had to buy
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into the creative strategy behind this reinvention, and that wasn't so easy.
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No, there's, I mean, there's three people, three groups of
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people she had to convince.
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She had to convince her record label and her team that this was, a great decision.
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She had to rally her collaborators around her to buy into her vision and to make
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a cohesive album, a pop album, and not make it sound like it's a desperate
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collection of, say, eighties pop tropes.
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Right?
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She really wanted to create a sonically cohesive album, which isn't easy to
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do when you're working with a lot of collaborators, but I think most
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importantly, she also had to convince her fans that this was right strategy, right?
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Because a lot of those fans had grown up really buying into Taylor Swift's
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authenticity as a singer songwriter, and moving full on pop, and not
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having those intimate country songs.
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May really get in the way of that relationship she had with fans.
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And you start with her record label, her record label very smartly said, well,
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can you just give us three country songs?
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Because from a business perspective that made so much sense because she had
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conquered country music and pop music.
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You would think that the right strategy would be, well, why don't
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you just keep doing what you're doing?
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Like, wouldn't you rather conquer two markets than just one?
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And it wasn't like Pop was such a bigger market, at least in the United
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States, I believe pop music accounted for about 16% of the total music
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market and country music was 12%.
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So Swift was going from conquering both of those to potentially only
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conquering Although pop music did have more global appeal.
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And in terms of her collaborators, you know, it's, it's really hard
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to get people to buy into a vision, especially when you're trying to
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transform yourself and your sound.
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But I think what really helped tailor in this case is wasn't
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just changing her music.
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She wasn't just replacing the banjos and mandolins with synthesizers.
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Like a lot of her, a lot of the reason for her transformation or her, her reason
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for wanting to transform herself was really driven by her own internal compass.
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Like she was in her early to mid twenties at the time, and so much
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was going on in our, in her life.
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And we've all been in her early twenties before.
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We know that can be a very exciting but chaotic time.
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And she felt like she needed to move to pop music to really express
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those emotions and experiences too.
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And then when it comes to her fans, you know, think she really she really.
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How do I put this?
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She really framed it as personal growth and she talked to them very directly and
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said, Hey, my life has changed and I think my music had to change along with it.
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And she really made sure that they were comfortable with that transition and
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she really spent a lot of time trying to explain that transition to them where
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I think some other artists may have just maybe not had such direct contact
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with their fans, but I think since she did and she really explained herself, I
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think that eased the transition a bit.
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You have to give some credit to Borchetta as well for backing her because he did
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ask for three country songs and she said, no, you also then link it beautifully to
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the likes of Steve Jobs, which the famous saying, focus means saying no to a lot of
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things in order to focus in places where you have to back your own convictions
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and you write a lot about that.
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But for the release of 1989, which is this pop album, she used the technique
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that is called Entertained Uncertainty.
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I thought we'd share that with our audience because it will link to their own
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work, not their Taylor's Swift listening, but certainly their own work in business.
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Yeah, what I think probably a lot of listeners know that
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Taylor drops hints and clues.
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She does this pretty frequently and her fans start to speculate
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and they, it builds all this hype within the fan community and then
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that spreads to other people.
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Then eventually, the mainstream media catches on and it just becomes a hoopla
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of anticipation about what she's going to announce or what's coming next.
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In Taylor Swift's career, and she did this with 1989, which is the record we're
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talking about, which was released in 2014, it was a big transition to pop and
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she didn't announce that she was gonna have a new album, but she announced that
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she was gonna be going to do this live.
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Webstream at the time, which it was called.
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And she was, it was co-hosted by Co stream by a B, C and Yahoo.
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I think her fans knew that something big was coming, yet she
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still left it really open-ended.
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And I think this is the key to understanding how Taylor builds so much
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anticipation within her fan base is she gives her fans enough information,
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especially when it comes pretty close to when she's gonna make an announcement.
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And so her fans really begin to speculate, really begin to, they create their
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own videos, they talk to each other online but there's still reasonable
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doubt that it could be a new album.
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And I think that that's the term which is called Entertained Uncertainty,
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where think about when you watch the Titanic, well, you know that.
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The ship is gonna hit the iceberg, yet we still watch it trying to figure out
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how exactly is it gonna hit the iceberg.
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And we really watch it for the story.
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And that's what Taylor does so well too by dropping all of these hints
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and clues is she gives her fans enough information where they can really
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speculate about what's gonna happen, but she leaves just enough doubt
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where it leads to this anticipation.
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But once fans, once she actually announces it, fans feel really happy
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because they essentially guessed what was what was gonna happen.
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That sequence of the book.
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So at this stage in the book, you talk about how she really led the audience with
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her own story, sharing her story, bringing them on the journey of her own life.
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She got some criticism for that, but it reminded me a lot of what.
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Jeff Bezos, when he was CEO of Amazon did with his letters to the
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shareholders in the way telling Wall Street what was going on.
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Look, you're not gonna get your dividends paid back.
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We're in this for the long term.
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Yep.
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how an organiza, how, how her fans thought about that.
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And I have to quote this man, beautiful quote that you shared
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in the book was actually Bezos's last letter as CEO of Amazon.
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And he said, we all know that distinctiveness originality is valuable.
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We are all taught to be ourselves.
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What I'm really asking you to do is embrace and be realistic
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about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness You
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have to pay a price to for your distinctiveness and it's worth it.
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The fairytale version of Be Yourself is that all the pain
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stops as soon as you allow your distinct distinctiveness to shine.
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That version is misleading.
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Being yourself is worth it, but don't expect it to be easy or free.
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You'll have to put a lot of energy into it continuously.
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I share that because I think it speaks to many of our audience as well, Kevin,
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who paddle their own canoes or think differently and are constantly checked
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on that by organizations they worked in, but embracing that is really key
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and it reminded me of something you said to me when you're working as an editor.
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Embracing other people's work.
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You ask them things like going, why can only you write this book?
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And for me it's such an important part of your work.
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But also the theme of this book is back yourself and back your difference.
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Because actually the difference is what stands out and it's not gonna be
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easy and people are gonna push back massively as they did for Taylor Swift.
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Oh, for, for sure.
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That's such a great way to put it.
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And you know, Taylor took a lot of risks to move into pop.
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I think music critics at the time thought it was an inev, it was an
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inevitable decision that she was always gonna move to pop music.
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That may be true, but it wa it did come at a business risk and it
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also came at a reputational risk.
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Taylor Swift was one of the biggest artists of the time, and if she had
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tried to move the pop music and it wasn't successful, I mean, she would've been.
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She would've been heavily criticized, she did receive a lot of pushback from her
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record label, yet she really pushed to do what she wanted to do, which is good.
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But then she also really put in the work of making sure that it worked.
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Yes, she created a great product.
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That was a number one priority, but number two, she really spent the time
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explain that transformation to her fans.
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And I, if she didn't do that, I'm not so sure that it would've
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worked as successfully as it did.
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And if you look at music artists, we tend to think of them as rebels, right?
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They tend to, a lot of artists tend to like, I'm gonna let the, I'm
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gonna let the work speak for itself.
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I'm gonna let the work speak for itself.
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But Taylor has never really done that.
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I think, it may be uncool to have a live stream and to explain your
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decision making if it was some, you know, apple keynote or a TED talk.
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I think in this case it was, it really worked successfully.
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There was a lot of other artists at the time who were trying to experiment
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with releasing music in novel ways to catch people's attention.
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But Taylor decided not to do that.
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She decided to really have that direct communication fans, and it worked.
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So was it uncool?
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Was it a really rockstar, punk rock thing to do?
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No, but from a business standpoint, I think it was the right decision, and
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I think the results speak for itself.
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1989 at the time was her most successful and most popular album.
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So now we're in 2017 and she starts getting slammed for
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theories of inauthenticity.
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So I didn't notice, I was telling you before, like I have no
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idea of this pop culture stuff that's going on in the world.
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People often ask me, Kevin, you.
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Know, how do I get time to read, et cetera.
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That's why I don't engage with any of that kind of stuff.
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And it's not a criticism of it, just you have to make choices.
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But I missed all this stuff and I certainly missed the second Kanye
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incident, and I didn't even know about that song, that Kanye song.
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So I'll let you fill in this.
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There's one quote, I'll just lead with it, and it's Mark Twain.
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A Lie Can Travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
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That came to mind because this is what happened.
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Right.
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Taylor Swift has received a lot of attention and positivity around the
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brand that she's built, which you could argue is built on authenticity, right?
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As this super relatable person, she seems more of a person that you'd go to brunch
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with than some huge superstar, and that's contributed mightily to her success.
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But there's also a negative to building your brand around authenticity is that
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a lot of people may think that what you're doing is actually inauthentic.
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And Taylor has always received those criticisms, and I think a lot of critics.
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Thought that this is all construct, right?
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She's not really that nice.
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She, it's all a front and Kanye West comes into the picture again in 2016.
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He releases a song called Famous, where he calls Taylor Swift, a
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bitch, and her fans get very upset.
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Kanye comes out and said, Hey, actually, I called Taylor and I got permission this.
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Taylor comes out and said, well, I never gave you permission to
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call me a bitch in the song.
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And months later, Kim Kardashian, who was Kanye West's partner at the time, releases
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a of videos that Kanye had recorded where it seems to show that Taylor
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Swift gave Kanye permission to do this.
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And it.
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really set off a social media firestorm.
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A lot of people, and a lot of media members thought that Taylor Swift's
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career was in jeopardy because people had found out that she was a snake, so
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to speak, and her social media pages were infiltrate, people would snake
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emojis, you know, thousands if not millions of people were doing this.
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And it became this, this huge issue.
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And Taylor thought that her sheath herself thought that her career was
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potentially ending, which sounds extreme, but a lot of music is driven
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by network effects, by social influence.
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And I think Elvis realized this, where he said, you know, I'm afraid that the
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light's gonna go out just as soon as it went on, because it does seem very.
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Mysterious of how if not millions, upon billions of people just
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suddenly flock to a certain artist.
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And it seems like that is a very tenuous situation.
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And if you have a huge movement that's saying that Taylor Swift is
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a snake and she's inauthentic, and you've built your career on that
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authenticity, that can be a huge problem.
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And in Taylor's mind, and she's talked about this multiple times
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since then, she was really worried that her career could be in jeopardy.
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And then she says, I thought the moment of backlash was going to define me
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negatively for the rest of my life.
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And I looked at the video, Kevin as well.
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There's a long form.
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Somebody uploaded the video of the whole conversation.
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I dunno how it got out there, 'cause supposedly Kim Kardashian recorded it,
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but the whole video got out there and.
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He, she actually asked him, I thought you were gonna call me a bitch or something.
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And he laughed nervously.
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He doesn't, doesn't tell her.
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So.
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So that's, that is a good point, right?
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Because swifties tend to get after me about this when I don't say this, is that
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those initial videos were heavily edited.
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The full video did come out years later.
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And the, you're right, the full video does show that Taylor Swift
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actually wasn't lying, right?
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She did give him permission and she did say, you know, oh yeah,
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no, this is fine, this is fine.
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But he was not completely honest about what he was gonna say in the song, he did
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not say that, I'm gonna call you a bitch.
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And that's exactly what he did.
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Um, and so when that initial video came out, it seemed like, like Taylor
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was like, oh no, this is great.
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Yeah, totally fine.
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And then once her fans got upset, the feeling was she.
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S basically stabbed Kanye in the back.
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But then it turns out that that actually wasn't the case at all.
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And Kanye was, I mean, let's be honest, was manipulating her.
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And this is the second time that Kanye has done something this to, to Taylor Swift.
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Yet the time, Kanye wasn't doing all the crazy stuff that he's doing today.
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And people thought of Kanye in high regard, and they turned
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on Taylor pretty quickly.
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And eventually the Kardashians as well got a bit of, comeuppance, a bit of
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karma as well, because, she released the video on her own social media and on,
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as you told us in the book, keeping Up with the Kardashians, which was a real
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low blow as well to, to somebody else.
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And surely the Kardashians know what that's like to be
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basically judged on social media.
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But she comes back, thankfully.
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So 403 days after Kardashian posted her edited Snapchat video, she released
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the single Look What You Made Me Do.
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And this was the first single from her sixth Studio album at
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this stage, which was inevitably titled, as you say, reputation.
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Yeah, Taylor, Taylor had a choice, right?
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She, she went away and she could have decided with her next album to, she
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could have moved in a more pop direction.
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She could have decided not to tackle the, the controversy, she to tackle it head on,
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and she made, she made art out of the, all of all this bad news, all this, all this
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bad stuff that was going on around right?
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And I think this is something that Taylor's always done where
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she takes that criticism and she turns it into storytelling.
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Right?
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She turns it into music and rather than coming out and complaining about
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it, she essentially has multiple dis tracks on that reputation album.
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And a lot of that album, as you mentioned, it's called Reputation
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on purpose, because her reputation as she thought was in tatters, and
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it was a pretty ballsy move on her part to, to fight back so vehemently,
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but to do it through her music.
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So at this stage I want to tie it back.
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Kevin, in the book constantly brings this back to business speak as well.
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I'm drifting a bit here man, 'cause I've become a swifty.
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But you talk about how an organization has to deal with , those moments where
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in a way their reputation is revealed to be not what they say it is, et cetera.
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And sometimes an artist will do crazy stuff and go way off track.
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And there was a little bit of a feel about this album, reputation album, but
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at the time as well, just to bring people into the storyline, her contract with
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Big Machine, her first and only label was expiring, and she had to decide,
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does she place her faith with Scott Borchetta, who in a way took a punt on
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her in the early days and no, she took.
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A punt on him, but he was starting the label and there was rumors for a long
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time that at this stage he was gonna sell the business that he had had it
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up for sale for, for quite some time.
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And just to give you, give you one last piece here is that also at the
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time she had been considering the frustration of not owning her masters.
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And I'll let you describe what that is to our audience as well.
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If we don't know what masters are.
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So this is a major decision for Taylor because she had signed with Scott
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Borchetta when she was 15 years old, and.
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As we'll talk about Scott Beta's persona grata in the
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Swift community at this point.
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That relationship has frayed, but let's be honest, it's one of the
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most interesting and fascinating relationships in music industry history.
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I mean, he had started his label the ground up and she was one
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of the, his first signings.
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And I don't think Scott Borchetta and Big Machine would be as
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successful without Taylor Swift.
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And you could argue that Taylor Swift not be as popular without Scott Borchetta.
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So Taylor had a decision, contract was up, should she re-up with Big Machine
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or should she go in the open market and sign a contract with someone else?
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And a, a big part of these negotiations was her master recording.
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So the master recordings are , the actual recordings of the music that she has.
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and a lot of artists don't own their master recordings.
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The music labels own them.
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And I understand why, because music labels take on a big risk
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initially to sign an artist.
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And with those master recordings, they can make money over the long term.
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Right?
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They can decide how that music is distributed and if it goes on streaming
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or other services, they are gonna make money off of that album, even if it's
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15, 20 years after they initially signed the artists in that album came out.
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But Taylor really wanted to own those master recordings, and I understand why.
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I think, yes, a lot of artists wanna own those master recordings, but I
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would say she had a special claim to those recordings because, know, she,
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yes, she was a musician, but she had also spent so much time building up her
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fan base and building a personal brand.
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So I can see why she felt more ownership over that music and wanted
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more control over that music too.
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It was essentially about control.
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If Taylor owned her master recordings, then she could decide
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what to do with her music, right?
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She didn't have to listen to anyone else.
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She didn't have to get permission from anyone else.
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And so Scott Borchetta was also in a really interesting position
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here because Swift represented, there's different numbers.
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I talk about this in the book, but close to 30% of big machines revenue.
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And obviously he didn't want Taylor Swift walk away yet.
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Giving up the master recordings would've been an issue too.
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And so he was in a really tough position.
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Eventually he did decide to give her the master recordings,
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and so Taylor had a choice.
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She could really go back with.
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Big machine, or she could go to a bigger label.
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And ultimately she decided to leave those master recordings behind and to
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sign up with Universal Label Group, which is one of the, it still is one of
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the biggest labels the music industry.
24:26
And as she told Scott Borchetta and a text message when she signed with Universal,
24:31
she said, you know, I had a choice between choosing my past or choosing my future.
24:36
And I think knowing me, you know, which one I chose.
24:38
So she chose her future.
24:39
And I think a big reason she signed with Universal Label Group
24:42
is Universal Label Group had way more of a global imprint, right?
24:46
And Taylor's always been popular and the United States in the uk
24:50
and Australia and New Zealand.
24:53
But I really think that because of streaming, the music industry
24:56
is becoming much more global.
24:58
I think it made sense for her to go to Universal Music Group so she
25:01
could expand her global appeal.
25:04
And we'll talk about streaming in the moment because myself and Kevin were
25:08
talking off air about the shifts in the landscape becoming a digital landscape
25:13
and actually what that did to the whole industry and how an artist had to behave.
25:17
And before we do, I just wanted to talk a little bit about this because a
25:20
couple of things came up for me here.
25:22
One was, if you rewind back to that huge shift to, to record 1989, which
25:27
was our first full on pop, electro pop, kind of based on the eighties, there's
25:32
very much eighties theme through it.
25:34
She talked about how in a way, her colleagues, people who had been working
25:40
with her at Big Machine, it felt like they were having interventions with her.
25:44
They're like, let's talk some sense into her here.
25:47
And later on she talked about, and she, you quote her in the book saying
25:51
The Molecular Chemistry of Big Machine was that every creative choice I
25:55
wanted to make was second guessed.
25:58
And she, at the time, she was overthinking albums.
26:00
Now I thought about that and I was like going, that's kind of
26:03
what happens to people who are creative inside an organization.
26:07
They're almost gaslit and made think you're thinking crazy here.
26:11
Yep.
26:12
it's very frustrating then when actually what you thought of is done by a
26:15
competitor or a startup and you're going, that's the thing I was talking about.
26:19
yep.
26:19
in a way, she was going through her own version of this at the
26:22
time, and it was Rea reason she went to Uni Universal as well.
26:26
For sure.
26:27
And you know, I sympathize with, with that and we don't know details
26:32
of what was actually going on behind the scenes, but that quote
26:35
that you said is really telling.
26:37
Yes, Taylor is a, is great, a great business mind and she
26:41
makes great decisions and her fundamentals are extraordinary.
26:45
But I think deep down, if you had asked her, if we were in a room with
26:49
Taylor Swift right now and no one knew who she was and we had to introduce
26:52
ourselves, the first thing she would say is, I'm a singer songwriter.
26:54
Like she's really is a creative at heart and.
27:00
that she felt like she was being questioned and the fact that she
27:04
was second guessing her decisions
27:08
you know, that really had to, I mean, this was a long relationship, right?
27:11
This was over a 10 year relationship.
27:13
And when she started off, she was 15, 16 years old.
27:16
So that also had to make the relationship complicated because if
27:19
you're bringing up, an artist who's 16 years old, if you're the founder
27:23
of the record label, I mean, you're probably taking on a more parental role.
27:27
You're really showing her the ropes.
27:29
And it might be hard to transition once that artist becomes 25, 26, 28 years
27:36
old and is really smart and really knows what she wants to be an artist.
27:41
And the other thing to keep in mind too Big machine was
27:44
really a country music label.
27:45
And Taylor was increasingly moving to Pure Pop and.
27:52
I think she, she decided that, I'm not, I don't need to be, I don't need
27:56
my choices continually questioned.
27:59
what's interesting these days is, even though she's working about Universal Label
28:02
Group, she's really, she's co-producing her albums as she always has, it's really
28:09
her team that's developing the music.
28:12
It's not Universal Label Group.
28:13
Universal Labor Group is really the distributor of her music.
28:16
And of course they do have some creative say, but it's really Taylor
28:20
and her team that are bringing finished albums to Universal Label Group.
28:25
And then Universal Label Group is determining, their promotion and marketing
28:28
strategy and distribution strategies.
28:30
But Taylor is increasingly doing things in-house and is using music labels in
28:35
different ways than most artists do.
28:38
So we're at 2019 now, April, 2019, and the big machine sale is dragging on.
28:44
But this must have been a tough decision.
28:47
She released Lover this album Lover and had a lead single Me, which
28:51
was essentially, as you say, an unconditional self-acceptance song.
28:56
But this also led into the final, the sale of Big Machine.
29:00
And he sold it for a staggering $330 million to Ithaca Holdings, who was
29:06
owned by this guy, scooter Braun.
29:09
And he was a college dropout who went on to guide the careers of people like
29:13
Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Kanye West.
29:16
Her nemesis as well.
29:17
But interestingly in that.
29:18
Sale as well.
29:20
We knew, back to what you said from the early days that Swift came from a
29:25
wealthy family that really supported her, hence moving to Nashville.
29:29
Her dad had invested in big machine and he made 15 million from the
29:33
sale as well, which is incredible kind of backstory behind this.
29:37
He did.
29:38
Yeah.
29:38
So initially, so there's all these rumors that Taylor's dad bought her
29:43
way into the music industry, which I'm sure happens occasionally, but at the
29:47
same time it doesn't make much sense because Scott Borchetta was, started his
29:51
own label and he needed Taylor Swift.
29:52
Yes, he needed funding, but he also needed Taylor Swift to be a huge success.
29:57
And you can't really buy your way in the music industry that way
29:59
because the only way you can be successful in the music industry is
30:01
if millions of fans like your music.
30:04
And that really has nothing to do with money, but.
30:07
Her father Scott worked in finance, was like really shrewd with finance, and he
30:14
did invest initially into Big machine.
30:17
I can't remember what the initial sum was.
30:18
I think it's for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
30:21
And he was only one of a few shareholders, a big machine.
30:25
And so once Big Machine sold, he did make a pretty hefty profit, which I believe
30:29
you quoted was around $15 million.
30:32
So that's an under-reported, really interesting wrinkle in this story because
30:37
Taylor came out after that sale and was really angry because she knew that
30:42
big machine would be sold eventually.
30:44
And she knew that her masters would be sold along with it,
30:46
but she just did not agree with.
30:48
Who they were sold to, which I can understand because
30:51
this is her life's work.
30:52
And then all of a sudden your music is sold to someone who you think
30:55
is, has worked with your arch and nemesis Kanye West in the past.
31:00
And if you don't feel like your music is in a place where people will really
31:05
be a great steward for that work, I can understand how that would be
31:11
extremely frustrating and upsetting despite the fact that her dad made
31:17
a ton of money off of the sale.
31:20
And but Braun flipped it quite quickly and made a fortune out of it.
31:24
Yeah, I mean, Taylor came out and was really, really angry.
31:28
She, the day that it was announced, she released a letter on her.
31:33
On her, I believe it was her Tumblr or Instagram page, and did not mince
31:37
words, was really, really upset.
31:40
And of course her fans rallied behind her and it led to a lot of
31:45
really negative PR for Scooter Braun.
31:50
Scooter Braun decided to get, you know, re to sell Swiss Masters to someone else.
31:58
And what's interesting about that too is that Taylor did try to buy her masters
32:01
back from Scooter Braun, her and her team, and they were in negotiations, but
32:06
Scooter Braun ultimately decided to sell those to a subsidiary of, of Disney.
32:14
Disney.
32:14
I didn't know it was at Disney.
32:15
Shamrock Ings was the The company.
32:18
Yeah.
32:18
Yeah.
32:18
So her next album, so she's written Universal here.
32:22
It's a miss.
32:23
By her standards, and that's important by her standards
32:26
compared to the bar she had set.
32:28
So this was, , coming after the album lover, and on top of this,
32:33
her market share was shrinking.
32:35
So it looked like the end for Taylor Swift looked like this was a bad move.
32:39
You talk about how this happened.
32:40
Sometimes when you move to a different company, which we've all experienced
32:44
happens in sports happened myself, where you go to a different team, doesn't really
32:48
work, and you lose fate in yourself.
32:51
And it, it's the start of the end.
32:52
It's the beginning of the end.
32:53
So people thought that this was it.
32:54
She had, she'd got to a very good place and you link it here to the
32:58
term premium position captivity.
33:02
Yeah.
33:02
I mean, this happens to a lot of great companies where they're so successful
33:10
and they're so dominant that they become captive to their own success, right?
33:16
Things are changing around them, but since they're doing so well,
33:19
they're not really thinking about the outside environment, or at least
33:22
not in a way that they really should.
33:24
And once things shift.
33:27
They're caught flatfooted.
33:28
They're not able to as agile as they should be.
33:32
And you could argue that this was happening to Taylor Swift, where for
33:36
the longest time she really didn't have to worry about streaming.
33:40
She actually had a very contentious relationship with streamers where she had
33:43
pulled a lot of her music from Spotify, and she had a very public battle with
33:48
the co-founder of Spotify, Daniel Eck.
33:52
And streaming isn't just a distribution service, it really changed the way
33:57
we listen to music and what we think about music and how we access music.
34:02
And by 2020, most of Taylor Swift's fans were on Spotify she really didn't
34:11
have much of a strategy beyond now finally putting her music on Spotify.
34:15
And there's all these other artists who I talk about in the book who
34:19
up around the time of Spotify.
34:21
And because of that, were.
34:23
Much better at adapting to audience preferences.
34:27
And Taylor was much slower to adapt to those things.
34:29
It's really the first time in her career where I'd say
34:31
she was caught behind, right?
34:34
She was caught flatfooted.
34:35
And that album lover, even though the initial numbers looked extraordinary in
34:41
the long run, really weren't as good.
34:43
And this was her second straight album that did not rise above the
34:47
previous album, which was 1989.
34:49
So yeah, she was in a position where she really had to make,
34:52
she had to make a change.
34:53
She couldn't keep doing what she was doing.
34:55
She would still be a successful artist.
34:57
Yes.
34:59
But, it's just like in sports.
35:00
You wanna win Super Bowls, you wanna win championships.
35:02
And if you're not making the playoffs every year, then you know someone's
35:06
gonna say that, oh, something's wrong.
35:07
And it's the same way in the music industry.
35:08
She was the number one artist, and her market share was dipping a bit.
35:14
And like any business, she obviously wanted to grow her
35:16
business and to grow her fan base.
35:18
And in order to do that, she, something had to change.
35:20
She couldn't keep doing what she was doing.
35:23
I love this part of the book.
35:24
I, I really went deep on this.
35:25
I went down so many rabbit holes, man on this.
35:28
I, not only with Taylor playing in the background of course, but at this stage,
35:33
so there's a journalist, uh, Tatiana Cirisano or I think that's her name.
35:37
I'll link to her, her brilliant blog actually.
35:40
I looked at her blog.
35:42
She talks a lot about the music industry.
35:44
You quote her and she talked about these different tiers of art classes of artists.
35:49
So class one was pre-digital era, essentially, which Taylor was, we forget
35:53
that, yes, she was around MySpace, but the music didn't exist except for things like
35:59
Napster or illegally, maybe a little bit on iTunes, but it was still transactional.
36:04
You still had to buy it.
36:06
And her success, you talked about the premium customer captivity.
36:10
Her success was based on these parties, these ways to get people
36:15
to buy physical albums, buy multiple versions of the physical album.
36:18
It was a different world.
36:20
And then class two were the ones that straddled both worlds.
36:23
They came from the old world, Beyonce herself, and then they went into the
36:27
New World and had to deal with both.
36:29
And then it was class three people like Drake you talk about.
36:32
And they treated it totally different.
36:35
And you really important thing you say here, Kevin, is her problem with
36:40
streaming stemmed from mostly the ad free that, or sorry, the ad supported
36:45
tier, the free, the common subscription.
36:47
Lure of of freemium.
36:49
So get them on.
36:51
Then convert them because the ads are a little bit annoying.
36:55
They're bugging you all the time.
36:56
So that's a tax for having it free.
36:59
Yeah,
36:59
And that was one of her problems because she didn't want this premium product that
37:03
she'd built and written sitting beside, for example, you say ads for me undies.
37:09
yeah, yeah, for
37:10
So this was a huge challenge.
37:11
yeah, yeah.
37:12
I mean, yeah, one, I mean, there's a, there's a value problem here.
37:15
It's like you don't want your music being interrupted by, by ads, but
37:19
there's also like a big economic reason why Taylor was resistant to put her
37:24
music on streaming, at least initially.
37:27
When, when an album comes out, some point she would withhold the music
37:31
from streaming for a month or two.
37:33
In other cases, she withhold it completely.
37:35
Her strategy evolved over time.
37:37
But I mean, make no mistake, like a lot of her decisions around streaming
37:41
were economic because she was really the only artist at the time who
37:45
was selling physical albums and selling a lot of physical albums.
37:49
And economically, that was much better for her to sell physical albums than
37:55
streaming, because with the free ad tier, not only is her music getting
38:00
interrupted by ads for, razors and undies and all these other things,
38:05
she's not making royalties off of that.
38:08
Right where she's making a much bigger royalty off of physical albums.
38:12
Right.
38:12
So this is where the premium position captivity come in.
38:15
She was really the only artist who could sell millions upon
38:18
billions of physical albums.
38:20
This was before there's the, now Vinyl has, there's a new resurgence
38:25
in vinyl and physical products.
38:27
But in 2020, a little earlier, that wasn't really the case, but Taylor was
38:31
really the only one who could do that.
38:33
So she was right to try to maximize that strategy as much as possible.
38:41
when streaming came in, she just didn't have the right strategy.
38:44
So for lovers, she used all these old strategies that have worked in the past,
38:48
yet didn't really find new ways to make her audience and to grow her fan base.
38:55
This is all leading up to the pandemic and we all know what that meant as well.
39:00
It's so interesting when you read it in the timeline, you've put together
39:03
because the pandemic comes along and just happened with so many organizations, it
39:08
sunk some of them, but it accelerated some into the digital age and for
39:12
her, the pandemic threw the industry and the turmoil, let alone her.
39:16
So concerts were gone.
39:18
Album is delayed, cut off retail channels, everything changed.
39:23
So you had to be on Spotify, you had to be on these dominant platforms.
39:28
And the other thing that you say that's interesting to note is before there wasn't
39:32
that many people on those platforms.
39:34
I remember that in the early days there weren't that many on them.
39:37
There wasn't that much music on them.
39:38
In fact, things like YouTube had more music back then.
39:41
Certainly more indie music and different music, different genres.
39:45
But Spotify was still early on its S-curve.
39:49
And now it's been, it has gone through its hu huge transformation.
39:53
Transformation.
39:54
I'd say for example, the Pandemic was a gift to Spotify in some ways.
39:58
for
39:59
So she had to be on it and she had to embrace it.
40:01
it was a, it was a gift to, to Taylor too, because it's not, it wasn't
40:05
just about getting her music on these platforms because her music eventually
40:09
did end up on those platforms.
40:10
She would just delay for a while.
40:13
Then when she would release a lover, it was a simultaneous release.
40:16
It went on Spotify the same day as the physical albums went on sale too.
40:20
The main issue , is Spotify, because it changed our preferences and
40:26
it made music so easy to access and just gave us so much music.
40:32
With the click of a button, we have access to like the entire music
40:36
catalog in the world essentially.
40:38
And that changed what listeners want and it changed how listeners behave.
40:44
And what really helped tailor during the pandemic is she
40:49
didn't have to worry about radio.
40:52
She didn't have to worry about how is this music gonna sound in a stadium.
40:56
And I think those constraints or lack of constraints, let's say, allowed
41:00
her to change what she was doing.
41:02
So instead of, making an album and really pushing it in this big mass
41:08
media way, she went to work and created an album called Folklore and
41:14
worked with some indie rock producers.
41:18
it's arguably the best album, her career.
41:20
'cause it really returns to her roots as a singer songwriter.
41:23
It's not pop at all.
41:25
And let's say it's more of a indie folk type of album.
41:28
And yeah, it really helped her to think about her music in new ways.
41:33
Not only the content around the music, but how she releases that music.
41:36
So she surprised, released that album.
41:38
There was no big roll up to that album.
41:41
So really surprised her fan.
41:42
She, announced it and then at midnight that night, the album was on Spotify.
41:47
So that really helped.
41:48
But then I think this is the biggest strategy change.
41:51
She released another album months later called Evermore, and then
41:55
she's continued to release new music.
41:57
Anna has continued to, I mean, she's released about
41:59
eight new albums since 2020.
42:02
And she used to release an album once every two years.
42:05
Right.
42:06
And I think that's the big change, that's the big adaptation to the streaming age,
42:10
where it's really hard to catch people's attention, like really really hard.
42:16
Once you do, I think it's really important to continue to develop that relationship
42:20
and to create as much content as possible, as long as it's good content.
42:24
And that was the big change.
42:25
And I think that's a big reason why her popularity has surged since
42:29
2020, is because she went from a very precious songwriter would only release
42:36
music every two years to a really prolific songwriter who releases a
42:41
ton of music at a really fast clip.
42:45
Which also proved to me in that sequence when you're writing about Dessner, who was
42:49
the create, the producer who produced that album, he gave her kind of scraps of stuff
42:55
that he w he had worked on the off-cuts, kinda like when you write a book and the
42:58
chapters, you didn't publish the chapters, you decided not to include the bits,
43:02
the stories she ga he gave him because she's like, just gimme whatever you got
43:06
there to get me a feel of your work.
43:08
And he said like he came.
43:09
Back like a day later and she'd written like three songs or something like that.
43:13
So you also get these little hints that for people who doubted that she was
43:18
writing the music, she absolutely was.
43:20
And you could only do that if you were writing your own music.
43:23
You couldn't, you, you couldn't.
43:25
This is not like, you know, I think about shows like Family Guy, where
43:29
eventually they, it's not just the main Seth McFarland writing them,
43:33
it's actually a team of writers or Simpsons as they grow and grow.
43:37
, Because when you get to the ERAS tour, you couldn't do what she did.
43:43
Three and a half hour tours, three and a half hour shows
43:47
it, unless you went through the struggle of writing those songs.
43:50
It's like when you're, when I interview you, I absolutely know you wrote the book.
43:55
, You didn't have , a ghost writer, writing for you.
43:57
'cause you know the stories in Inside Out and you only really, really do that
44:03
when you've gone through the struggle.
44:04
Yeah, and I think our fans recognize that too.
44:08
for some listeners who don't quite understand the music industry, it
44:11
is actually pretty rare for someone of the stature of Taylor Swift
44:14
to be really in charge of her own career, really writing her own songs.
44:21
A lot of artists of that caliber are really, really dependent on,
44:24
on co-writers who are doing most of the work, if not all of it, right?
44:30
I mean, it varies by, from artists to artists, but the fact that Taylor is
44:35
of what she's doing, how she's in full control of her at, at the creative
44:40
side of her career, and the fact that she's writing these songs from her
44:44
own perspective is, you know, the devil's in the details and I think.
44:50
You can tell by the way she sings and you can tell by the way she expresses herself.
44:54
And I think that's, you know, one of the many reasons why she's able to have
44:57
such a deep connection with, with her audience while doing this, while changing
45:03
in some cases, like pretty dramatically from from album to album, right?
45:06
I mean, from Lover to Focal, that was a huge transition.
45:09
Lover was a big bubblegum to Pop album Folklore was, was more of a indie rock
45:15
album, which is a big shift for her.
45:17
Yeah.
45:17
I think when she's at her best, she finds ways to, like the shift in the music is,
45:22
is based on the stories and the emotions and the experience she wants to express.
45:27
music is, is secondary to that, right?
45:29
It's, it's like the, the music is, is a way to get her point of view across.
45:34
And so when she's at her best, , the emotion and the lyrics
45:37
are in lockstep with the music.
45:38
And that's why she's able to adapt so often because the core of what she
45:42
does doesn't necessarily change, even though the music sounds a bit different.
45:45
One of the things she'd been criticized for is like writing
45:48
about boyfriends and, oh, you shouldn't be doing that, et cetera.
45:51
I thought about that, that because we've done two episodes and I've
45:54
read the book over two weeks.
45:56
I was thinking about that.
45:57
I was like, on everything I write is based on some experience in life or something
46:04
I'm reading 'cause you don't have an output without an input and you just.
46:08
You mix it, it marinates with your own thoughts and your own metaphors
46:11
and the way you make sense of things.
46:13
And that's why I actually write is to actually make sense of this and
46:16
to learn it in a different way.
46:18
So of course she's gonna write about the experiences you had in her life.
46:21
I,
46:21
yeah.
46:21
I don't understand that as a criticism.
46:23
is, is so bizarre to me.
46:26
Right.
46:26
Um, I think it's just a way to put her down and it's, comes from a
46:30
sexist point of view too, where, I mean, love and heartbreak is what
46:35
lot of great music is based on, and the fact that she's returning to
46:38
these scenes over and over again.
46:40
Makes total sense to me.
46:42
It's why you look at a Picasso painting.
46:44
You look at a series of Picasso paintings, like, yeah.
46:46
They start to look similar after a while because he's obsessed
46:49
with the same themes in the, in the same ways to express himself.
46:52
And he's just trying to perfect that over and over and over again.
46:54
And you can see that with other artists too.
46:56
So the fact that she's obsessed with love and heartbreak,
46:59
seems like a positive to me.
47:02
Right.
47:02
I don't see any issue with it whatsoever.
47:04
I often think about that I think we mentioned on the first part was when
47:09
people are critical of people like Taylor Swift for their success . And
47:13
it goes back to what I was saying about Bezos, that there's a huge
47:16
price you pay for that to be.
47:17
Yeah.
47:18
To be consistently there.
47:20
Like most people would be happy with one album or one, even the number one.
47:24
I was thinking about this, how that song, Suzanne Vega, you know,
47:27
Tom's Diner, that famous song was playing in the gym earlier on.
47:30
That was a remix version of it.
47:32
And you've given me a new lens to hear these things.
47:34
And I was kind of going like, if you're Suzanne Vega, that song was
47:39
at number one for a very long time.
47:41
Of course you're delighted.
47:42
Mm-hmm.
47:43
then some people like Taylor, her Swift's like, that's not enough.
47:46
I, I wanna not only have an album that ne needs to win a Grammy's or VMA or
47:51
whatever, I wanna do it again and again and again and again, and I wanna dominate.
47:56
yeah.
47:56
And then you know that, that belligerence is just incredible.
48:00
Well, you know, it's something that we admire in athletes, and I don't
48:03
know if we admire it so much in musicians, at least female musicians.
48:06
And for me, her competitiveness, her drive is one of her defining traits.
48:11
she's talked about this in an interview lately where, , recently where she's on
48:15
a late night talk show where she hasn't done that much recently, but for this
48:18
album cycle, the life of a Showgirl album, she's been more out front with
48:21
the media she says, you know, people, I forget how she phrases it, but she's been
48:29
criticized for wanting to be number one.
48:32
And because she's obsessed with being number one, especially over a long
48:35
period of time, say she's been on the number one spot for nine weeks.
48:39
Well, she'll put out new, new variants or digital downloads to make
48:43
sure that she stays at number one.
48:45
But of course then she does this.
48:46
She knocks someone else, someone else who could be number one is number two, right?
48:51
And she's like, well, yeah, of course I wanna be number one.
48:54
Like of course I wanna keep doing this.
48:55
And.
48:57
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
48:59
I think her, her drive and her competitiveness is a big reason
49:05
why she's continued to do so well.
49:08
And look at the ERAS tour.
49:09
I always use this example.
49:12
The ERAS tour demand was extremely high for that tour.
49:15
She hadn't toured in years and years and years.
49:18
Ticketmaster said that she would've had to play 900 stadium shows to meet the demand
49:23
for the first US leg of the tour alone.
49:25
Right?
49:26
And of course, there's no way she could have done that.
49:28
And she didn't have to because the demand was so high.
49:31
She didn't have to play a three and a half hour show.
49:34
She didn't have to play a set that was 44 songs.
49:37
She could have played a two hour greatest hit show, and I think her fans would've
49:39
walked away and they would've been joyous.
49:41
But instead, she plays three and a half hours.
49:44
And I think part of that is her competitiveness, right?
49:47
She knows that she wants to put on the biggest show possible and
49:50
will stretch the limits of her.
49:53
At the physical limits and emotional limits of what she's able to do.
49:57
But it also shows that she's fan obsessed too.
49:59
I think she's, she's obsessed with setting those high expectations,
50:04
but then exceeding those high expectations for her fans.
50:06
And even though it comes at great cost to her physical cost, emotional cost,
50:09
and economic cost, putting on a three and a half hour show is much more
50:12
expensive than putting on a two hour show.
50:14
Yeah, I think she understands that those concert moments are huge
50:19
conversion events for casual fans who go, like, they'll be lifelong Taylor
50:23
Swift fans, but it's also a way to really strengthen the bond among fans.
50:28
And so putting on the biggest show possible, really going over the
50:31
top and doing a three and a half hour show is a way to just build
50:36
loyalty and passion in her fan base.
50:40
But she's the most successful, famous person, most popular artist in the world.
50:44
She doesn't have to do those things, but she continues to do that.
50:47
And that's just her.
50:49
her competitive competitiveness and her drive, right?
50:53
Where I think a lot of people would get to that height and maybe they'd get a little,
50:57
I mean not necessarily complacent, but maybe they just, you know, they just do
51:00
the job that they're supposed to do and maybe exceed expectations a little bit.
51:04
But I don't think many artists would be willing to go to such great
51:07
lengths to exceed, which are pretty high expectations to begin with.
51:12
And the physical toll of that is massive.
51:15
The when I was, because I've been looking at Taylor Swift content on my YouTube, my
51:21
algorithms all over the place has gone.
51:22
What happened to you, man?
51:23
Yeah.
51:24
So
51:24
to me when I was writing the book too.
51:25
The algorithm was very very confused.
51:28
It was, yeah.
51:29
yeah, it was like, this is unlike you.
51:31
I felt judged, but a piece came up about the athletic comparison to her tour.
51:38
So she was touring for like, it was like 400 days or something.
51:42
Wasn't it?
51:42
It was crazy amount.
51:43
It was over.
51:44
up playing 149 shows across the globe, which spanned about two years.
51:50
Yeah.
51:50
And so in many cities she was playing three nights, three nights in a row.
51:54
So it was Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
51:56
So at three and a half hours of clip, she was on stage for
51:58
about 10 hours each weekend.
52:00
And you can imagine the, also the rehearsals, the dancing, 'cause like,
52:04
again, I know this from you and then checking the videos to see it live is
52:08
that the sets were extravagant as well.
52:10
It wasn't a case of, oh, let's do this as cheaply as possible.
52:14
The sets were for each era, not only a costume change, but a stage
52:19
set change to, to mirror that.
52:22
But there's a couple of things Kevin, I just wanted to share before we ended
52:24
to bring it back to the business thing.
52:26
I thought this was really important thing.
52:29
You mentioned this term, attention inflation, and essentially you say in
52:33
the book, as our consumption becomes more unfocused, its value decreases.
52:38
In other words, we rarely give a piece of content or undivided attention,
52:42
Yep.
52:42
which devalues the attention we do provide because we engage with
52:46
the content only halfheartedly.
52:48
Yep.
52:48
For those of you listen to us, listen fullheartedly.
52:52
For labels and artists, the impact of attention inflation has been profound.
52:56
Music listening has become increasingly passive.
52:59
The initial buzz around new releases fades more quickly,
53:02
Yeah.
53:02
it's much more difficult to generate a wave of enthusiasm and support
53:06
for an artist and their music.
53:08
In effect, deeply engaging listeners is harder than ever before.
53:12
And this is where I wanted to link it back to something you said.
53:15
Because Taylor was a class one superstar, and she understood the old world.
53:22
She was able to pull off this transition and she was the queen of reinvention
53:26
here because she used the skills she'd learned in class one to really navigate
53:32
the transition to become now what She really is a Class three superstar.
53:37
Oh, for sure.
53:38
Everyone always ask me like, what's the secret that Taylor Swift's success?
53:41
And of course, I could rail off 10, 20, 30 different things.
53:46
But if I had to say the number one thing I'd say it's her fan
53:49
obsession and it's her ability to build a community around her ideas.
53:53
And this all started very early on in her career where she was fans for hours
53:57
after shows and like really developing those close relationships with fans.
54:01
This is like in-person contact as long as well as online contact too.
54:06
And this has helped her mightily.
54:08
Through our career.
54:09
'cause when you talk about attention deficit or intention inflation,
54:13
it's really hard to release content these days and to gain traction.
54:18
A lot of digital companies, even media companies are really struggling with
54:22
this today because for the longest time, you know, you could put out
54:26
content and it would, you would get great reach on the internet.
54:29
But the internet is really becoming a pretty niche places and people are
54:32
congregating and in smaller communities.
54:35
And because of a personalized algorithms, you know, we're, the content that we're
54:39
getting is really personalized to us.
54:41
And Taylor, I say more so than most other artists has realized that
54:46
yes, her music is important, right?
54:49
Like the quality of the content is really important.
54:52
But probably what's more important is building that community because
54:55
that's really how your ideas spread more widely, but also more deeply.
55:00
And.
55:01
is something that she's done extremely well.
55:03
Now that you're in the Taylor Swift algorithm, I'm sure that you've seen
55:07
this on Instagram or TikTok where the fan community is extremely vibrant
55:13
and fandom used to happen on the far reaches of the internet, right?
55:17
It was fandom happened in a vacuum, but that doesn't quite happen anymore because
55:21
of these algorithms that send us content.
55:23
And even if you're a casual fan, you can really take part in the super
55:27
fandom and learning what all these fans are saying about her music
55:31
and her relationships, et cetera.
55:34
And Taylor does a really good job of igniting that flame in her fandom,
55:39
which is, would say the number one reason why she continues to be one
55:46
of the most, if not the most popular artists that we have these days.
55:51
The last thing I'd love to finish on is a beautiful way you describe her
55:54
because I saw this myself reading it.
55:57
I was essentially off air.
55:59
Just how incredible.
56:01
How her incredible drive her strategy, her bounce back ability.
56:06
There's a couple of quotes I pulled here that I absolutely loved there
56:09
was, from the song New Romantics, she said, 'cause baby, I could
56:13
build a castle outta the bricks.
56:14
They threw at me.
56:15
I, I loved that.
56:16
But she really built an empire, not a castle, but this one I loved.
56:20
And this was from, uh, the ERAS docuseries.
56:23
She said, everyone, everyone's jealous of what you've got.
56:27
No one's jealous of what you had to do to get it.
56:30
Yeah.
56:30
And that's the piece for me.
56:32
I always say that about people who are in the spotlight.
56:35
How can that be easy?
56:37
Yeah.
56:37
You have to really commit to that level of lifestyle.
56:42
And I'm sure so many people who are there kind of going, oh, I don't know.
56:45
If I do it again because I have no privacy, I'm in the spotlight, especially
56:49
with social media, but ultimately what she built, you say if you ask Swifties
56:55
to describe her, they'll say stuff like extraordinary, rebellious, strategic,
56:59
groundbreaking, prodigious, but mostly you say it's Nasim Taleb's, anti-fragile.
57:06
Yeah.
57:07
It's such a, a great term for her.
57:10
Where I look at anti-fragile, it's a step up from resilience, right?
57:14
When we think of resilience, it's, oh, I got through a really tough time.
57:18
And I made it through.
57:19
But anti-fragile is, not only did I make it through, but I actually came
57:22
out stronger than I was in the past.
57:24
And tale uses the metaphor of a caKyndryle and a wind.
57:27
Sometimes the wind will extinguish a flame, but there's other times when a
57:31
wind will make that flame much stronger.
57:35
And he says that you wanna be the caKyndryle and wish for the wind.
57:38
And that explains Taylor Swift to, a tee.
57:42
She's gone through so many struggles, she's gone through so many challenges,
57:45
so many different changes in the music industry, and yet she's finds a way to
57:50
not only get through those challenges, but to grow stronger as a result.
57:56
Right?
57:56
I mean, she's, this is 20 years in the making and I think it's
57:59
really rare for an artist to not settle into being a legacy act.
58:03
To remain the most relevant artist, the most popular artist
58:08
20 years into their career.
58:10
And to grow their fan base over time is a pretty extraordinary achievement.
58:15
And that's because she's anti-fragile.
58:17
She has found ways to grow despite the difficulties and changes around her.
58:23
Beautiful.
58:23
And the thing I really thought at the end was because of that ERA'S tour,
58:28
that could have been really the finale.
58:30
It was like showing the back catalog.
58:32
But that made so much sense to me when she'd rerecorded the back catalog.
58:37
'cause it brought it all together and it was all live at once.
58:40
And I was kind of confused when I've heard some of these songs on the radio and stuff
58:44
like that, when you pass by coffee shops sometimes my wife's listening to something
58:48
and I just thought, like, I had no idea of the timeline, certainly that it went
58:53
back so far with all these number ones.
58:55
I just thought it was all kind of recent and then I was like going, well maybe
59:00
I thought that because of her strategy with streaming because it seems like
59:03
it's just this body of work, this oeuvre that's constantly going and
59:09
she's dominating the billboard charts.
59:12
Yeah.
59:13
I mean, I, it's probably the most extraordinary thing about her career
59:17
is that she hit that plateau in 2019 with, with Lover, I mean, a
59:22
plateau, I think any artist would kill for the results of that album.
59:26
But if we're comparing Taylor Swift to Taylor Swift, she was in a plateau.
59:29
But her ability to just like radically pivot from there and like all the
59:33
music that she's really since in the way that her popularity has surged,
59:37
even though she was the biggest artist that one of the biggest global artists
59:43
that we have, It was really something that I wanted, wanted to explore.
59:47
Right.
59:48
And I think this is what's pretty unprecedented about her is that now 20
59:53
years into her career is she's found a way to increase her relevancy and
59:59
increase her popularity because the, ERAS tour grossed over $2 billion is
1:00:03
the highest grossing tour of all time.
1:00:05
And that number, $2 billion sounds like a lot, but in some ways it
1:00:10
shortchanges the impact because really didn't overprice her tickets.
1:00:14
A lot of people think that she did, but she really didn't.
1:00:16
I think considering the demand for those tickets, they were reasonably priced and
1:00:21
I think she could have milked much more money out of that tour than she did.
1:00:27
So it's really an achievement that we haven't really seen before, and
1:00:32
may be controversial to some people who love the Beatles, but I would
1:00:36
say that what Taylor has been able to achieve over the last five, six years
1:00:40
is as if not more impressive than what the Beatles did in the sixties
1:00:45
because the industry that she's been operating in is much more difficult.
1:00:49
We don't live in a monoculture anymore.
1:00:51
And her ability to really see how the industry has changed and to see how
1:00:56
fan expectations have changed and her ability to meet those expectations is
1:01:00
something we haven't really seen before.
1:01:02
. Taylor Swift, we salute you.
1:01:05
Fantastic career.
1:01:06
And I want to salute you as well, Kevin, where can people find out more about
1:01:09
your work, about the book, et cetera?
1:01:12
You can go to nothing like this book.com, which is my website.
1:01:15
You can find me on LinkedIn at Kevin Evers, or you can follow me on
1:01:20
Instagram at There is nothing like this.
1:01:23
Author of, there's nothing like this.
1:01:24
The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.
1:01:26
Kevin Evers, thank you for joining us.
1:01:29
you so much.
1:01:29
This is fun.
1:01:30
I hope you enjoyed.
1:01:31
There's nothing like this.
1:01:33
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