Taylor Swift has long been taken down as a covetous and rapacious woman. She sells expensive merchandise and encourages fans to buy almost identical versions of the same album. Tickets to her concerts have, like all concert tickets over the past decades, slowly crept up in cost (both in line with her rising star and inflation). For it, she has become extraordinarily wealthy. In October last year, Forbes made the call (these are usually arbitrary guesstimates) that Swift’s efforts made her a billionaire.
This has not made Swift particularly popular. She may have reached new realms of stardom in the past year but a meteoric rise is necessarily accompanied by a stratospheric fall. This level of acclaim and popularity is simply unsustainable and the most likely thing to put a pin in the vastly overinflated balloon is money – something that exercises even the mildest of people. In fact, cracks have already started to emerge in Swift’s imperial command over the culture.
This looming crisis was trailed in November 2022 when tickets for her Eras tour first went on sale in the United States. She broke the world record for the highest single-day ticket sales ever for an artist. But thanks to astronomically high prices – the result of scalpers buying and reselling tickets at an inflated rate, and the mere base cost of some tickets – the world was quick to put manners on Swift. What kind of artist would charge her fans thousands and thousands of dollars to see her tour?
I think this is probably a reasonable question. Swift is no saint no matter her aspirations for universal adoration. But there are forces outside of even her control. She is not, for example, responsible for the unfortunate byproducts of her own popularity – namely the staggering demand for her tickets that saw some fans pay up to $20,000 for a seat from scalpers.
More than the passionate (and deranged) devotion of the fans, Swift can hardly be held to account for historic M&A deals. In 2010 Live Nation – once an event and concert promoter – merged with Ticket Master to produce a colossus with near-monopolising powers over the industry. The company – with its proclivity for hidden fees and tying prices to demand – has made itself rather unpopular. After the first tranche of Swift’s tickets were sold, Ticketmaster was hauled in front of a Senate Hearing, where the Judiciary Committee condemned the uncompetitive industry.
After Oasis’s long feted reunion was finally announced (written as though it was a foregone conclusion, which of course it was ...) the rush for tickets here was predictable. And as is usually the way – with Oasis, Bruce Springsteen, Harry Styles, at times Taylor Swift, but not for the most recent sale – the advertised prices of the tickets were massively out of whack with the reality (owing again to the demand-led system).
Now Lisa Nandy, the UK’s culture minister, has made similar overtures to the United States, saying “the government is committed to putting fans back at the heart of music”. Reasonable, if not necessarily a top-shelf priority for a new government fast out of its honeymoon period.
The truth is that Swift and Oasis both bear responsibility for the price of their tickets, in conjunction with Ticketmaster
In Ireland, the consumer watchdog has said there are now “legitimate concerns around the consumer experiences of buying concert tickets”.
Oasis have been subjected to their own scrutiny, but it is certainly worth reminding ourselves that they never received the Taylor Swift treatment over this bungled ticket sale. No charges of money-grabbing or fan-exploitation for the brothers. Rather, the vitriol has been turned on the monopolising, badly run Ticketmaster. The truth is that Swift and Oasis both bear responsibility for the price of their tickets, in conjunction with Ticketmaster.
[ Being Irish isn’t what made Oasis great, but being the sons of emigrants helpedOpens in new window ]
The real question, of course, is why on earth shouldn’t they charge for their tickets? It seems, especially in the case of Taylor Swift, that fans harbour very unreasonable expectations: that not only must she be a monopoly-busting financial services regulator but also her entire product should be exempt from the market forces that touch all other corners of the economy. Exactly why this coterie of angry Swifties think she somehow must transcend the foundational and organising principles of the 21st century frequently goes unexplained.
Last year a CNN headline said “No one does capitalism like Taylor Swift”. (The “do capitalism” construct indicates this will not be a serious critique). The piece rattles off the usual: her wealthy upbringing and reams of privilege, how her concerts can act as a fiscal stimulus, her admirable entrepreneurial spirit, the vast sums she has acquired. But at no point does anyone – and it is not just this particular writer’s fault – explain why Swift should participate in the economy in an entirely different way from what they accept as standard for all others.
[ Big sister energy: How Taylor Swift built a billion-dollar musical empireOpens in new window ]
It must be something about the property of music itself: it is important to nearly everyone; live music is a particularly central and beloved aspect of life; it is incredibly cheap, or free, to access through our phones. This all has a distorting effect on the perceived obligations of artists to their fans. Do we expect them to not just write songs, but subvert and rewrite the economic principles the rest of us adhere to?