Taylor Swift: The world's foremost audience expert
A study of the audience funnel (Taylor's version).
Sometime last year my kids started getting into Taylor Swift, AKA Tay Tay, to my 7-year-old … and my wife. This is a fairly regular development based on, like, every conversation I had about Swift during the last year, which was dominated by The Eras Tour. A lot of this fame, and eye-popping fortune-building is due to her remarkable musical talent. But, I’d also attribute a lot of her success to the fact that she regularly demonstrates some of the best audience building instincts imaginable.
Let’s count a few ways …
Sparring with Ticketmaster on behalf of her outraged (and litigious!) fans.
Putting on a 3+ hour concert over 150 times during a two-year span.
Packing that 3+ hour show with her hits.
Adding a few deep cuts for the super fans.
Releasing that show to movie theaters so fans who couldn’t get or afford tickets could still see it.
Putting out an extended edition when it finally came to streaming platforms, to encourage even fans who saw the full show live or in theaters to come back and watch again. (My wife and kids did.)
Releasing new albums constantly and in newsworthy fashion. (Hello, stealth double-album drop!)
Signing copies and sending them to independent music shops when she clearly does not have to.
Collaborating with other stars and earning the attention of their fanbases. (This is how she got me, working with The National and Bon Iver.)
Constantly staying in the conversation. (The Grammy’s album drop announcement pretty much dominated headlines after the event, even as much as yet another Beyonce snub.)
So what are the major takeaways from all of that? Let’s reframe this and say that Taylor Swift is her own media company (which is not at all a stretch). She’s listening to her audience and incorporating their feedback (engagement). She’s staying visible and in the conversation (as media companies do with hit shows and major news stories). She’s constantly producing content (regular publishing keeps fans coming back for more). She’s making the most of that content by making it available via as many touchpoints as possible (distribution). And she’s working hard to give them what they want … namely MORE Taylor Swift.
Every media company is trying to drive habit. They want readers/viewers/listeners coming back day after day. If that’s the goal, learn the lesson of fan behavior because that’s what you’re ideally trying to create with the audience funnel.
This is the fan audience journey, Taylor’s version. I get a taste. I like it and want more. I come back again to try something different. I like it again and start to embrace even new content I hadn’t tried before and, wow, that’s pretty good, too. Okay, now I buy the album, which is similarly great, so I pony up for the entire catalog and OMG THIS IS AMAZING! WHERE HAS THIS BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE?!?!?! I’M NAMING MY FIRST-BORN TAYLOR, BOY OR GIRL, BECAUSE IT WORKS BOTH WAYS, BUT BEFORE THAT, PLEASE, JUST TAKE MY MONEY!!!
Fans are addicts. They are with you through thick and thin. They’re your evangelists. And what you’re selling? They want it. All of it. This is the very bottom of the audience funnel. This is where every media company strives to get to. For Swift, the diameter of that funnel bottom is roughly that of planet Earth.
Whether its sports or music or a movie series or whatever, when fans get a taste of something they love, as soon as that taste dissipates on their palate, the next thing they want is more. (I always picture post-event fans like Kylo Ren inside the AT-AT in Star Wars. Once they see something they like, their appetite is insatiable.)
This is why postgame sports shows do well, and outlets like The Athletic have seen success in having their writers chat/engage with fans after a sports event ends. (A FAR better use of time and knowledge than game stories, IMO.)
Of course, this is greatly aided by a good product. And with Swift, the product is very, very good. But there’s one more element that I believe is truly central to her success, and is an important part of the puzzle for media companies as well: Authenticity.
Part of the reason Swift resonates as well as she does, and her music is as beloved as it is, it because it positively GETS the human experience. There’s a warts-and-all quality to it. She could gloss herself over like many a pop-star that came before her, but instead she puts herself into her songs. And in doing so, she comes across to listeners as just … so … real.
Let’s break here and quickly discuss those recent album reviews, which were, um, not great. Taking nothing away from any critical discussion about the album(s), it matters not at all. Why? Because there are so many people, so smitten with Taylor Swift that they’re experiencing her in their own way … and that’s the only way that matters. People can fixate on whether or not Swift’s music is great art, but when it comes to her audience, that misses the point entirely.
How many of this world’s “best” artists have died broke? There is “greatness” as defined by handful of people paid to pontificate on these artistic creations, and then there is the greatness that comes from audience resonance, when another human out in this world looks at something and says, “Yeah, I see myself in this. I’m here for it.” That latter bit, the part based on recognition, not “greatness” is how you win an audience and this is how Taylor Swift has built her empire.
Critics can (and have) called Swift’s newest albums self-indulgent. Are they? In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” These critics aren’t “wrong,” but there are just a whole mess of people with a very, very different point of view. They disagree with that view emphatically because when she writes about catastrophically messy relationships, they hear her lyrics and think, “Preach, sister.” That’s why, in an era in which no one buys albums anymore, she sold 1.6 million albums in a day. And that’s why Swift’s juggernaut will not be slowed any time soon.
She’s taken ownership of her story (and her song catalog). People appreciate her art, and her personal story, because they relate to it and recognize how hard that is via their own experiences.
I don’t pretend the decisions around Swift’s career aren’t calculated. She is surrounded by a legion of extremely savvy folks who have a lot of great ideas on how to maximize her resonance — Big Swift, as it were — but it all works because of the way Swift resonates with her audience. And do I believe a lot of this begins with Taylor herself? Yeah, I do, because it gets back to audience appreciation and authenticity.
My uncle used to oversee a major music venue in the Midwest. In the process he’s gotten an up-close, behind-the-scenes look at a lot of musicians. He’s met Eddie Vedder and Neil Young and Cyndi Lauper, among dozens of other musical legends. He has an arsenal of amazing stories that start out like, “I remember, I was having a snowball fight with Bono and The Edge … .” He also has one about Taylor Swift.
Very early in her career she opened for another act but was already overtaking them in popularity and thousands of fans turned out to see her. They lingered after her performance, hoping to meet her and maybe get a photo or an autograph. There were still more than 300 fans in line when Swift’s mother, traveling with her on the tour because she was 18 at the time, urged her to get back on the tour bus. It was getting late and she had another show the next day.
Per my uncle, she told her mom they needed to wait so she could spend more time with her fans because those fans spent the time, money and effort to come out to see her. She kept mingling and signing for her adoring, selfie-snapping public.
Simply put, Taylor Swift may or may not be a music-making genius, but she understands who fuels her financial success. It’s not the producers, or the suits or the record labels. It’s her relationship with her audience.
She turns these listeners not just into super fans, but people who would walk through a wall of fire just for the privilege of handing her hundreds of their hard-earned dollars. And that, my friends, is how you build the most enviable audience in the whole wide world.
Coming Wednesday: Please, God, let me kill the game story
Hi, I’m Mike. I’m a former editor for The Washington Post and ESPN. In 2024 I founded and now operate Launcher, LLC, a digital media consultancy operating out of Arlington, Va. Want to work together? Reach out on LinkedIn.