By Lukas I. Alpert
Sales of Swift’s albums drive the fortunes of the entire music industry, as her catalog continues to dominate streaming lists all over the world
The drop of a new Taylor Swift album is the equivalent of a market-moving event for the record industry.
A new album from Taylor Swift may excite her legion of fans, but no one is more thrilled by news of her upcoming release than the music industry itself.
The 12th release from the reigning queen of pop – titled “The Life of a Showgirl” and due later this year – represents an epic event for the music business, with sales and streams of the new songs expected to measurably drive profits across the industry.
The album comes amid a long period of transition for the music business as listeners have shifted to digital platforms, forcing the industry to find new ways to make profits. Gone are the days of regular multiplatinum albums, so sales like Swift’s have an outsize impact on the bottom line.
“With streaming turning dollars into pennies for a lot of artists, that Taylor Swift is able to drive the whole market like this is a genuine phenomenon,” said John Covach, the director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester. “It’s like when the Dow takes off, but it’s really being driven by one stock.”
Details of the new album remain sparse, beyond the name and a rough target release date of later this year, announced by Swift herself on the podcast hosted by her boyfriend, football player Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason.
Swift’s last album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” accounted for over 6% of all album sales last year, according to Luminate, a music industry data tracker. In all, the album sold 3.491 million physical and digital copies in 2024, more than seven times the sales of the next-best-selling artist.
That album dropped in the midst of Swift’s “Eras Tour,” which grossed an estimated $6.5 billion in ticket, merchandise, and food and drink sales.
Swifties, as her fans are known, also consistently push her catalog to the top of most streaming services around the world – with 26.6 billion streams on Spotify alone last year, the most of any artist.
Spotify (SPOT) said “The Tortured Poets Department” racked up a record 300 million streams the day it was released in April 2024.
All of that came despite mixed reviews from critics and the album’s lack of a singular major hit.
Since 2018, Swift’s music has been released by Republic Records, an imprint of Universal Music Group (NL:UMG). Universal reported a 9% spike in revenue in the second quarter of last year, compared with the same period in 2023, and 4.3% growth in the third quarter, largely driven by the release of Swift’s last album.
The pop star’s back catalog also continues to drive meaningful numbers, particularly on streaming. Luminate ranked Swift’s 2019 hit “Cruel Summer” from the album “Lover” as her top streaming song last year, besting songs from any of the four albums she has released since.
Earlier this year, Swift announced that she had bought back to rights to her first six albums, bringing to a close a lengthy fight over control of her earlier releases and making her catalog one of the most valuable of all time.
-Lukas I. Alpert
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