Taylor Swift wins by building worlds
“Taylor may not be the greatest singer, but she might be the greatest business person in storyteller and music.”
Transcript
Taylor Swift just released four new songs, and listening to them only reinforces something I'd been thinking for a long time. Taylor Swift cannot sing, and I don't mean that compared to me, I mean that compared to the best vocal artists in the world. Beyonce, her, Jasmine Sullivan, Taylor Swift doesn't hold a candle to them voc
ally, and I understand I might get absolutely killed for saying that. But here's what's fascinating, Taylor Swift always wins. Her last tour generated more than $2 billion in ticket sales. The highest-grossing tour in history, because Taylor may not be the greatest singer, but
she might be the greatest business person in storyteller and music. She figured out that the product isn't just the song, it's the world. Taylor Swift is Fortnite, she's Roblox. You can't walk into a song for four or five minutes and understand why everyone is obsessed. You have to live in her world.
Her albums are eras, her relationships are storylines, her lyrics are clues, her recordings are new seasons, her album variants are collectibles, and her concerts are the lives of the world. They're a live experience and Swifties, they're the community holding everything together. So when I hear a Taylor Swift song, I hear a song, a Swiftie here is a callback
from eight years ago, a relationship, a clue, a new chapter, and we're literally consuming two different products. But that's her genius. She's incredibly vulnerable, she lets millions of people feel like they're inside her life, and there's nothing America loves more than access to the world of celebrity
and fame. Taylor Swift is not an incredible vocalist, she's an incredible producer, an incredible storyteller, an incredible businesswoman, and maybe the greatest world builder music has ever seen. The best voice might win a song, but Taylor Swift built something that keeps winning for decades, building worlds that people want to live in and become obsessed
with. Every industry, every business model, there's a larger opportunity hiding inside of it. I'm here to help you find them. Follow me for more tech and AI news.