Encore - Taylor Swift: Swiftonomics

23:24What a role call that is. All have featured in her music. In 2016, she was papped kissing Tom Hiddleston, the actor. So this, just like we had Brangelina, this was Hiddleswift for a while. So there were photo ops. He was even spotted wearing a iHeart TS tank top. Yeah. Speculation, though, that this was a publicity stunt. And I remember the period of her dating celebrity guys really, really well. And I think towards the end, especially around the Tom Hiddleston relationship, people started getting quite tired of the overexposure and they got really suspicious for better or worse right because Tom Hiddleston's always denied it was fake however shortly afterwards she began her longest relationship to date even though it is now over it lasted for six years and it was with a not quite famous person an actor Joe Alwyn the Joe Alwyn relationship was really kept on the down low like compared to you know tank top saying I love Taylor Swift.

24:21Maybe there's a difference between the ones which you miraculously get papped kissing Tom Hedleston, but this Joe Alwyn one was quite private. Maybe that was a real one and the other ones were slightly confected. One person she didn't have a romantic relationship was with Kanye West. He's back in the frame here because this feud returns because he debuted his track Famous, which included lyrics, I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why I made that bitch famous. Charming. Yeah. Kanye's made a few appearances in this podcast, surprisingly, even though he's not a billionaire himself. Yeah.

24:55And he actually released a video with Taylor Swift's face on a naked woman in bed with a naked Kanye and Kim. But he maintains, didn't he, that he'd got her permission and had a long phone call about this in which she approved, specifically approved that lyric. Yeah. So this is interesting. Kim Kardashian, who was at the time married to Kanye, told GQ that Taylor totally approved that. as in the lyric. She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn't. And Kim followed that up with releasing a video of the phone call itself. And you can hear Kanye telling Taylor about the line, I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, to which Taylor responds, it's like a compliment.

25:37And if people asked me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, he called me and told me before it came out, jokes on you guys, we're fine. So after Kim released the video of this phone call, hashtag Kim Expose Taylor party started trending on Twitter. You know, the backlash started brewing against her. People started thinking, oh, is Taylor manufacturing stuff? Is she just lying? Taylor says the video is very selectively edited. And she asked the question, where's the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me that bitch in his song? It doesn't exist because it never happened.

26:10And this was not the only guy that she was fighting on the public's arena. So in 2013, the radio DJ David Miller was sacked after she complained that he'd groped her at a meet and greet. Yeah, he sued her for$3 million in damages, claiming he'd been falsely accused, that she'd ruined his career. But his case was dismissed. And in fact, she then countersued, claiming he'd sexually assaulted her. She took the stand in court in 2017, so around the same time as his whole Kanye Kim feud, and said, you're supposed to be really polite to everyone. Something snapped, I think. And the jury ruled in her favour and she asked him to pay$1 to her in symbolic damages.

26:47It's the point of principle that she wants to prove. We should say this is two months before the Me Too movement really got going. So this was a precursor to some of that. And these kind of public battles, they kind of set the scene for what is now the big drama that goes on to kind of completely redefine her public image in the 2020s.

27:16In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two. What if you could have all three at the same time? That's exactly what Cohere, Thomson Reuters, and Specialized Bikes have since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs, where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment, and spend less than you would with other clouds. How is it faster? OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second.

27:53Cheaper? OCI costs up to 50 % less for computing, 70 % less for storage, and 80 % less for networking. Better? In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads. Right now, with zero commitment, try OCI for free. Head to oracle.com slash strategic. That's oracle.com slash strategic. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.

28:36I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is The Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

28:58So we come to 2018. Her record deal with Big Machine expires. She's been with them since she was 15. she moves to a new record label, Republic Records, and is part of the new deal with Republic Records. She's going to own all her masters going forward. But her old masters are still under the ownership of Big Machine. And then, pivotably, in 2019, Big Machine gets bought by a music executive called Scooter Braun. He's 38 years old. He's the guy who discovered Justin Bieber on YouTube. He also was managing Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato and Kanye West for a couple of years during the whole famous saga.

29:37So Scooter Braun now effectively owns the copyright to her six-album Master Catalogue, which even then was valued at$140 million. So just to remind you, Taylor Swift still gets the songwriter royalties, but now Scooter has the ability to decide that if these songs are used in ads or films, he will be the one who gets paid the Master royalties. Yeah, and it's just not that uncommon. Quite a lot of artists, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, even Bob Dylan actually sell the copyright to their recordings and they get paid now and the people who buy it will get the royalties many many years into the future so he essentially owns her back catalogue.

30:16But when the sale was announced Taylor posted on Tumblr and said that this was her worst case scenario all I could think about she says was the incessant manipulative bullying I've received at its hands for years you know from Taylor's perspective Scooter Braun was managing Kanye West during the time of the whole famous, you know, track and video fallout. So essentially, the way she sees it is that he wanted to control a woman who didn't want to be associated with them through the use and ownership of her master records. Got it. Okay. Justin Bieber comes to Scooter's defence, questioning Taylor's reason for the post.

30:53What were you trying to accomplish by posting that blog? Seems to me like it was to get sympathy. You also knew that in posting that your fans would go and bully Scooter. And she also revealed why she changed labels from Big Machine. She said, for years, I pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead, I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and earn one album of my own back at a time for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past.

31:27But as we'll find, she goes back to reclaim it. So Scott Bacetta has always disputed this. You know, he's posted screenshots of negotiation documents, a Swiss team that would give her control of her own masters upon signing. And he also claims that Taylor's father was informed because he's a shareholder. All of this makes the headlines. And Taylor ended her long post. Lover will be out August the 23rd. So once again, when she's in the public eye, she'll just drop a little promo in. Keep a look out for this. It's very canny. I feel like most people's natural reaction to something terrible happening to them is to clam up and be silent.

32:03And Taylor just doesn't do that. No. And that album, Lover, and all 18 songs from it, charted on the US Billboard singles chart in the same week, that sets another record for the most simultaneous entries by a woman, something which is only really possible, I suppose, in the age of streaming. So we come to the end of 2019. She's 30 years old. She's worth around$360 million. And then the pandemic hits and she has to cancel the Lover Tour. Yeah, but she releases two quarantine albums, if you like, in 2020, Folklore and Evermore. And people think that this sort of suited the mood of the time. Do you remember it?

32:40I listened a lot to Folklore in the pandemic. She worked with, you know, really credible indie artists like The National and Bon Ava. And I think it really kind of created a kind of national shift in the way people viewed Taylor. So I talked a bit about how, you know, her overexposure, her dating history, all of this has kind of made her vulnerable to a lot of criticism. A bit of a backlash, yeah. There was a big backlash. I mean, if you look at the media from the time people were publishing articles with headlines like how Taylor Swift played the victim for a decade and made it an entire career.

33:12When did you realise Taylor Swift was lying to you? You know, she was actually kind of in danger of becoming overplayed. And there was a point where she could have really lost that momentum. So that change in tone for folklore actually was pretty well judged and in fact brought her quite a bit of critical acclaim. And she was a pop sensation for sure. But there was a sort of maturity and a critical acclaim for this one. Yeah. And also importantly, what she's always said about the albums is that they're fictional. So they're not based on her real life. It's kind of stuff she made up during the pandemic.

33:43Right. So she's kind of distancing herself from the old Taylor who used to let her public life fuel her songwriting and make people obsess over, is this a song about Kanye? Is this a song about Harry Styles? She's kind of left it behind with these two albums. So she's kind of pivoted a little way here, but still moving on like a commercial juggernaut. Taylor Swift is too big to fail. And at this point, she does something truly audacious. she decides to re-record her first six albums, the ones that are owned by Scooter Braun. That is quite a move. I'd never come across that because I remember that story coming out.

34:18I thought, I wonder if anyone else has ever done that. Because there have been big bust-ups between artists and their labels before. You remember what happened with Prince, of course. George Michael had a big fight with his record label. This is a masterstroke. It's like, well, master literally using the word. If I can't own the masters to my own, I'll go back and re-record them identically so that I do own them. and they're called Taylor's versions, aren't they? Yes, they are. And it's become kind of a thing to not listen to the big machine versions of the albums. So if you're a Swifty... If you're a true fan.

34:48If you're a true fan, you will listen to Taylor's version. You no longer listen to versions that are now owned by Scooter. And that's asking quite a lot of your fans. It's asking them to go out and buy again something they've already paid for. So that's some loyalty they're showing there. It's interesting because when I first heard about her re-recording the albums, I kind of thought to myself, oh, what's the point, right? You know, you've already done this. Surely it's kind of artistically not very creative or fulfilling for you. But of course, it gets a lot of money in. Yeah. So she begins releasing these re-recorded albums in 2021.

35:18And every single one of them makes number one all over again. Yeah, she's only on number four out of six. So let's bring it up to date now. In March of last year, this massive carousel which careers around the world begins, the Era's Tour. And what is that again? What does it consist of? It's a retrospective. So she's singing songs from 10 studio albums. The set list is a mammoth, 44 songs long, and it lasts for three and a half hours. I mean, she's got some stamina to do that, hasn't she? Oh, yeah. She's a high energy performer. Yeah. And doing that for three and a half hours. This is 150 stadium shows and they keep adding new ones.

35:58Still rumbling on around the world. This is still going on as we speak. and it sold out in record time. So if you try to get your hands on a Taylor Swift-Earist ticket, you will know they were kind of averaging around$250, but many paid far more on the resale market and it's already the highest grossing tour of all time. Yeah, I remember these big tours. Remember when Pink Floyd used to have the highest grossing tour, then it was U2. Now she has definitely taken the crown. It's the first tour ever to surpass a billion dollars in revenue. And as you've pointed out, it's created this financial phenomenon, the Taylor Swift effect or Swiftonomics.

36:34Yeah, when the Taylor Swift show rolls into town, it makes huge revenue for each city. The 53 US shows alone added an estimated$4.3 billion to America's GDP, gross GDP. Climbing. Looking for another opportunity, she also funded and released the Era's tour concert movie. So if you couldn't get to the show itself, you can go and watch the movie. And the movie did incredibly well as well. Yeah, it made$100 million in global pre-sales alone and became the 10th highest grossing film of 2023 in the States. I mean, that is just crazy that you could just, oh, by the way, let's make another$100 million by releasing a video of the tour.

37:12Astonishing. So, I mean, it really is the kind of climax of what live music can do and how much money it can make in a post-streaming world. it's a far cry this business model from the old one where you know the rolling stones or the beatles would write an album go into the studio record it and then go and sit at home for the next two years and let the money roll in you've got to work hard for your money but if you do it right like taylor swift is doing it can be incredibly lucrative because you're not making the same kind of money on album sales that you used to so you know my in my day i'd buy a cd it cost me 14 pounds 99 you've sold tens of millions of those albums that's a lot of money with streaming you get fractions of a cent for every streaming thing and what's interesting about this is that when I when I was a kid and I went and I bought my 1499 album from W.S.

37:59Smith or Tower Records my financial relationship with that band is now over effectively until they release another album that's undone was with streaming and with social media the relationship you have to keep it alive all the time and I knew someone who was in a pop band and they said actually you've got to keep feeding the beast. You have to keep feeding the social thing. You have to keep that relationship up. They want to know what you're doing. They want to know what your car you drive, what clothes you're wearing. That relationship has to be fostered and nurtured and fed incessantly. And Taylor's very good at that.

38:32You know, even before the Eres Tour, she was doing things like sending presents to fans, unexpectedly turning up at some random person's wedding as a kind of like surprise. You know, she's... If you were the bride at this wedding, would you be... slightly pissed off that Taylor Swift comes and said, it depends on how much of a Swifty I am. And it also kind of probably depends on the partner and what they think of Taylor Swift. So, I mean, the money is rolling in. She's raking it in. In October of 2023, Bloomberg and Forbes declared Taylor Swift was a billionaire with$1.1 billion due to that era's tour and the movie, plus the release of Taylor's version album of those back albums.

39:12So they estimate she's gotten 500 million from music royalties and touring. £125 million from real estate. She has six homes and a$10 million private plane. And£500 million based on the rising value of her music catalogue. And actually, she's the only one of four musicians to have achieved billionaire status. We've done some of them on the show. But they made their big money outside of music. Jay-Z with his booze brands. Rihanna with Fenty Beauty. Jimmy Buffett has his Margaritaville, which is a chain of resorts based on his famous song. She is the first billionaire from the music alone. I mean, it's kind of inspirational when you think about it, because when you're a musician, you just want to make music, right?

39:53You kind of probably don't really want to get into other brands. You don't want to own a random resort chain. But Taylor's the one who made it all through music. Not only is she a newly minted billionaire, she's now got a new relationship with the NFL, American football player, Travis Kelsey. So again, the internet was buzzing with rumours about whether the relationship was a PR stunt. But it turns out that whether or not it is or isn't, The Taylor effect works for Travis. So there's been a 400 % increase in his jersey sales. He's gained millions of followers and even viewing figures for the NFL have improved.

40:27And this year, she's going to make even more money as she tours Asia, Australia and Europe. It's estimated the tour will net her$4 billion in total. So she may very well be quadrupling her wealth in the next few years. Are we at peak, Taylor Swift? We've got to be pretty close, haven't we? there was a point probably when you know she was in danger of being overexposed and people were like we've reached pete taylor swift nobody wants to hear about her and tom hiddleston who cares blah blah blah and then lo and behold we reached a new level of taylor swift obsession i know so i think you know the bar is pretty high i mean you've got to think in many ways the only way is down from here because she is already the most famous person in the world her tours are the highest grossing tours of all time the mind boggles as to how much bigger this phenomenon could get i think it will depend on where she goes as a songwriter because she is a great songwriter you know if you listen to more stripped back albums like folklore she knows her way around a really good song and when she kind of takes it all the way back to just that artistry her songs really really stand up for the test of time so i think it depends if she grows as an artist if she goes back to the old Taylor Swift of, you know, writing wrongs through music and, you know, getting in.

41:42Big public spats. Yeah, I don't think it's going to go well. But if she evolves as an artist, yeah, I think the sky's the limit. Have I already said this? I think that Shake It Off is one of the best pop songs ever written. No, you haven't. But that's good to get on record. Okay. It's irresistible.

42:01So Taylor Swift, good, bad, or just another billionaire? Let's start with the first category. So we rank these from one to ten. How does she score on wealth? Well, she's the richest musician who's made their riches through the music ever. But in terms of the billionaires we've covered, she's at the lower end of the wealth category. She's nowhere near a kind of Elon Musk. But Bloomberg said, taken together, Swift Inc., as they describe her, is essentially a multinational conglomerate with the world's most devoted customer base. It's the most charismatic CEO and significant economic power. I'm going to give her a six for wealth.

42:41See, I kind of feel like apart from the private jets, which I want to talk about later on, she doesn't actually wear her wealth that ostentatiously. No. Certainly not in the same way, you know, Elon Musk would, for instance. She's not riding rockets to the moon. Yeah. And she still has got that kind of girl next door kind of thing. I understand your pain. You and I can be friends. You know, there's nothing. She's not trying to be aloof or exclusive. No. So actually, I would give her a four out of ten for this. Like she's got a long way to go. She wants to hit the top 100 billionaires. OK, fair enough.

43:16I'm going to revise mine down to five. So you're a four. You've convinced me I'm a five. Now, let's talk about rags to riches. This is how far they've come. And this one, I don't think she scores that highly either because her dad was a stockbroker, came from a long line of bank presidents and they had a pretty nice life. Yeah, and I feel like the whole kind of folksy Miss Americana persona, if she hadn't moved to Nashville, she probably couldn't play that card really. You know, being a folksy girl from Pennsylvania who's the daughter of a stockbroker doesn't quite have the same ring. No, it's not the Dolly Parton story, is it?

43:49That's for sure. No. Rags to riches, two. Maybe not riches, but depth of fame. Rags to fame, she's probably the most famous person in the world. I'm going to slightly revise yours up to a three for me. Okay. Villainy. Now, this is an interesting one. This is like, you know, have they done people over, have they run their way to success? Have they played pretty fast and loose morally with how they've got there? And she's had plenty of public feuds, that's for sure. Yeah, definitely. So, obviously, Kanye West, Scooter Braun, Kim Kardashian, by extension, by way of Kanye. Katy Perry, Bad Blood. That was about Katy Perry, wasn't it?

44:22Yeah. Well, interestingly, there's been a lot of subtle comments made, but nobody's ever come out and said, besides Kanye, I'm in a feud with Taylor Swift. But what she does is she always looks like the kind of wronged party who triumphs over adversity in the end, and rightly so. She manages to come out on top. I wonder if this is, and maybe this is a generous interpretation, if this is just how women need to portray themselves in order to win. Like, maybe there's a Taylor who is just like, yeah, I'm going to knife people and I'm going to enjoy doing it because that's what the guys do. and that's what a lot of fortune 500 billionaires probably do all the time because that's what you need to win but if you're a woman and your persona is you know this folksy miss americana hero you probably can't get away with doing that so you probably have to make yourself out to be a victim yeah and also these feuds are very much the oxygen of her pr machine aren't they they keep it kind of on the road people are endlessly speculating who's she having a fight with now there is a commercial value to these spats.

45:25Yeah, and also, you know, the whole relationship stuff. You know, people do speculate all the time about Easter eggs left in her lyrics and her album art. You know, is this about him? Is this about, you know, this guy in particular? So she's very canny about playing her fan base in that way. I think one thing we can definitely sort of have a question mark about is that she's got, with this era's tour, she's got one hell of a card and footprint. Yes, yeah, she does. And interestingly, this relationship with Travis Kelsey has come under a lot of scrutiny because they are constantly using private jets to fly around to see each other.

45:59Two private jets. She's made 170 journeys in six months. And someone's done the calculations, that's 8 ,000 tons in carbon emissions. And that makes her 637 times bigger carbon footprint than the average person in the US. Yeah, she's estimated to have the largest carbon footprint of any celebrity. You can't go on world tours without, you know, without doing this kind of stuff. But there we go. Villainy, I don't know. I feel that some of the villainy is slightly confected because it gives the oxygen of social media and people are obsessed by it and it serves a purpose. She doesn't come across to me as like a sort of, you know, devious person.

46:36So I don't know. This is a hazardous category with an army of Swifties out there. I'm going to let you go first. Okay, so I actually think that the whole kind of Taylor manufactures all of this stuff, you know, she's just playing everyone for fools. I mean, look, at the time she was dating tons of guys. She was in her 20s and 30s. Whomst Among Us hasn't been there. If I was a multi-million dollar celebrity artist, I would 100 % be writing songs about all these guys. It's interesting that when it came to a more serious relationship with Joel Alwyn, that was kind of kept off the books significantly more.

47:13Can you really blame a songwriter for using her real life for material? No. Yeah, exactly. So for me, she doesn't score very highly for that. But the private jet stuff, come on, Taylor, at least plant a few rainforests. I know you could do it. So for the private jet stuff alone, the carbon stuff alone, I'd give her a 4 out of 10. 4 out of 10. I'm happy there as well. I don't want to be an outlier from you in any way. Just in case. We're going down. We're going down together. OK, well, here's a category where maybe Taylor can redeem herself. Philanthropy. Yeah, she's donated a range of charities with resonance to her particularly.

47:53She gave a million dollars to a tornado recovery fund in Nashville, a million dollars to flood relief in Louisiana, and 50 ,000 to New York City public schools. 50 ,000 seems like a pretty low number. She also has donated to people's GoFundMes. She donated 13K in 2020 to a mother who was struggling to pay the bills during the pandemic. She donated 50K in 2021 to a family whose father died of COVID-19. And she looks after her own. She reportedly gave every member of her era's tour crew bonuses totaling over$55 million, including 100 ,000 each to the truckers. I have a good story about this. I don't know if you can put it in because it's definitely not verified.

48:35So a friend of a friend worked on the Ears tour. And at the time they were giving out these big bonuses, he got called in to a room with Taylor and, you know, the rest of the big bosses. And he got given a check and he looked down and he saw$5 ,000 and he was like, oh, cheers, thanks very much. And everyone in the room started looking at each other like, OK, what's OK? And he walked out like whistling a tune, being like five grand. Great. Can go on a nice holiday. and the corridor was full of people weeping, calling families, being like, we can finally afford the deposit on the house. And he looked at his cheque again and realised he'd missed out the zeros and he'd been given 50k.

49:1350 ,000. Yeah. Wow, that is a good story. So philanthropy, I don't know, million dollars here, million dollars there and very good to her own people on the tour. I still think it's only a five. Yeah, I put it straight down the line, five out of ten. To be fair, she probably hasn't even started really thinking about it, right? She's not even really in the Oprah Winfrey level of her fame yet, where you're thinking about foundations and things. Correct. I'm sure that'll come, though. We've got plenty of time to be more generous, Taylor, if you're listening. Power. I think, I mean, we've already discussed this, that she can actually change the economic level of activity when her tour rolls into town.

49:53The Federal Reserve was saying she's boosted GDP in the US. That's quite an effect. An economist actually told the BBC, cities are constantly strapped for cash. So the impact of the Taylor Swift economy is that cities will have the revenue to invest in public infrastructure, transit, safety and planning. So if the pothole in your road gets fixed, maybe you can thank Taylor Swift. Amazing. So there's economic power. There's also political power. She's had quite an impact on that, particularly in getting people to register to vote. Yeah. So in 2018, 160 ,000 people registered to vote 48 hours after she weighed in on American politics.

50:29She was previously pretty kind of shtum on any kind of politics. She actually declared her support for the Democratic candidate in the midterm election in her home state of Tennessee and spurred a ton of people to vote. Interesting because country music and the heartlands of country music are generally considered to be more Republican leaning. So she's a bit of an odd fit there. Yeah, she's a bit of an outlier, which I think makes her political influence even more important because, you know, she's basically one in a very, very empty field of Democrat leaning country music singers. In fact, Donald Trump was forced to comment on Taylor Swift.

51:05He said, I think I like her music about 25 % less now. Very specific. Unfortunately, however, Taylor's candidate lost. But, you know, now she is on record as being a Democrat supporter. So if you've got presidents commenting on her, you've got Barack Obama calling Kanye a jackass when he tried to interrupt her. You've got people registering to vote for the first time. She's a powerful person. I mean, if she goes out or gets behind a cause or a subject, then she can move the needle on it. I'm going to give her an eight for power. I would give her a nine. But part of that is based on my idea that she could probably do a lot more.

51:44You know, like she's been quite quiet about politics, like, you know, in the last few years. I expect for this year, she's probably going to start becoming more vocal. And then we'll really see. Because we're in an election year in the US. Exactly. An election year, you know, in terms of countries. So I think we're going to really see the extent of that power play out this year. But that is a potential banana skin, isn't it? I mean, when people get involved in politics, people get fed up with that. It's like, you know, stick to your tools and all that kind of stuff. When people get actively involved in politics, it's a commercially dangerous move because you're possibly going to alienate 50 % of your fans.

52:17It is. And actually, there's a really interesting part in the documentary that she made, Miss Americana, where she has almost a screaming argument with her management team about her support for the Democrats. And she really does not like Trump at all. She's arguing with them about coming out politically as a Democrat. And it's really interesting because, yeah, all those arguments come up, but she's very firm about the fact that she has to say something. So I expect 2024 we're going to see her become a bit more vocal again. And then we've got Legacy. Kind of too soon to write this one yet, isn't it?

52:50I think when it comes to Legacy, she's going to not just have a cultural legacy, but also a legacy that will be really important for the music industry. Because interestingly, when the big machine records deal expired in 2018, she signed this new big multi-album deal with Republic Records, which is part of Universal. And she made it a condition of that contract that if Universal sold its Spotify shares, the label would distribute money from that sale to all the artists it represents, non-recoupable, which basically means that it won't count against their advances. And this was a really big deal to her.

53:25Apparently, it meant more to her than any other bit of the deal. So she was trying to make sure that other artists got more revenue than was normally the case. Exactly. And I think that if Taylor is going to get more involved in the whole, you know, argument that artists should own more of their recordings, they should make money from their art. I think she's going to have a really huge impact on the music industry for years to come, for decades. And also just the economic model she's got of the mega tour, the movie of the mega tour, all that kind of stuff that she's set a kind of template for how the music business can, should, and if you're famous enough, can work for you.

54:03While at the same time, giving the artists a bigger slice of the pie. Yeah, I think if you're an emerging artist and you want to be the next Taylor Swift, you're going to look at the business model and the way she's negotiated all those master recordings and think to yourself, OK, I don't need to sign away my life here. I can do a Taylor. And I think that's going to be really influential. I think that's going to be a big part of her legacy. That's really, really interesting you say that. I agree with you. I would say, yeah, for that, she scores pretty highly. I'm going to give her an eight for legacy.

54:33I would give her an eight for legacy too. And you know, she's got two more points to win in the next 40 odd years of her career. I think she could do it. She can make it to 10. Maybe we should come back and revisit this one in 10 years time and see what's happened there. So we have to judge her, Zing. This is the dangerous part of the recording. Is Taylor Swift good, bad or just another billionaire? Oh, you know what? I will hold my hands up and say I'm not a Swifty. I don't know much of her early records, but for the sheer amount of comfort that folklore gave to me during the pandemic, and also the fact that I think she's really pioneered in the way of being an artist and a brand, which I think is especially persuasive and influential for young women.

55:20I think she's got to be good. Yeah, who are you kidding? There's an army of Swifties out there. Of course she's good. No, I think you're right. She's basically really left her stamp on the music industry. She's got legions of adoring fans. She's a fantastic songwriter. Have I mentioned this already? That Shake It Off is the greatest pop song ever. You can mention it again. So for all those reasons, who are we kidding? Taylor Swift is good. All she needs to do is stop using the private jet so much.

55:51So there we go. That was Taylor Swift, one of our good billionaires. We'll be back in a couple of weeks revisiting another of our favourite episodes. And don't forget that we'll be back on March the 17th with a brand new season. Yeah, we've got some super famous billionaires lined up for that. But if you can't wait that long, there are lots of great episodes available to listen right now, including ones on a couple more incredibly rich musicians, Rihanna and Jay-Z. Thanks for listening to Good Bad Billionaire. This podcast is produced by Hannah Hufford and Mark Ward. James Cook is our editor and it's a BBC Audio production.

56:44Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.