Love her or hate her, Taylor Swift is one of the most successful music artists of the decade. Taylor's 1989 Tour grossed upwards of 130 million dollars. The tour itself was one of the most expensive tours of 2015 second only to Fleetwood Mac's On With The Show Tour and Maroon 5's V Tour. With over 90,000 copies of her album 1989 sold in the first week, Taylor Swift showcased her profitability as an artist.
Many celebrities, including Justin Bieber and Kanye West, have taken a hiatus from social media. However, they deleted social media after giving the public notice. Taylor's sudden deletion of all social media platforms quickly caught her fan's attention. This served its purpose when she released a promo of a new song. This promo included three videos of a snake, a nod to the snake emojis commented on her profile after Kim Kardashian posted a video of Taylor agreeing to let Kanye West use her in his song Famous. Less than 24 hours later, Look What You Made Me Do hit the market. The lyric video has already broken the record for most watched lyric video in 24 hours with over 19 million views in one day.
After the release of Look What You Made Me Do, Taylor's team announced the release of her new album Reputation and her international tour. Taylor Swift is doing something unique this tour. She has partnered with Ticketmaster in order for her super-fans to beat the ticket bots plaguing online ticketing sites.
This past week all of Taylor's social media accounts were wiped. There were no pictures on Instagram or posts on Facebook. Even her official website was blank.
Many celebrities, including Justin Bieber and Kanye West, have taken a hiatus from social media. However, they deleted social media after giving the public notice. Taylor's sudden deletion of all social media platforms quickly caught her fan's attention. This served its purpose when she released a promo of a new song. This promo included three videos of a snake, a nod to the snake emojis commented on her profile after Kim Kardashian posted a video of Taylor agreeing to let Kanye West use her in his song Famous. Less than 24 hours later, Look What You Made Me Do hit the market. The lyric video has already broken the record for most watched lyric video in 24 hours with over 19 million views in one day.
After the release of Look What You Made Me Do, Taylor's team announced the release of her new album Reputation and her international tour. Taylor Swift is doing something unique this tour. She has partnered with Ticketmaster in order for her super-fans to beat the ticket bots plaguing online ticketing sites.
Swift and Ticketmaster frame the program as a way to ward off scalpers and bots. However, this new system is basically a reward system in order to make securing tickets 'easier' and yet somehow more expensive for the fans. Bundling the album with ticket sales is a longstanding strategy used to increase album sales in a time where streaming sites are more popular than ever before. However, this time it isn't an album included when you purchase a floor ticket. Instead, fans are prompted to pre-order Reputation, shop Reputation merch, and buy Reputation a dozen more times from anywhere they can get their hands on it. And after fans do all of that, they are assigned daily tasks to complete in the hopes they can stay in the front of the line. The more things they buy and tasks they complete, the better the chance of securing a ticket.
Swift's marketing department is having her fans do the advertising for them. Fans can boost their chances without spending money by watching the lyrics video for "Look What You Made Me Do," registering for the Taylor Swift mailing list, and referring friends to the program, but those accomplishments don't earn you as much "boost" as buying a sweatshirt. A progress bar will keep track of the progress made, but there are no exact points keeping track of how far to go before unlocking tickets. Progress made is also highly dependent on the participation of other fans too. "Your standing may change as more fans join the line and participate in boost activities. Keep checking back for new boost activities you can do everyday," the website states. This allows Swift to rack up as many sales and views as possible before even selling a ticket.
Swift's innovative new selling format allows fans who were already going to spend that money the opportunity to secure better seats than before. However, this system may be a little off-putting for fans who are hesitant to spend the money. Bots are unable to buy unlimited quantities of merch, but then again so are most fans. Many of Swift's fans are unhappy about the new set up.
Fans of popular artists can expect to see this same layout in the future. Tying album and merchandise sales to tickets will become the new norm. Gone are the days of scalping and ticket bots. Fans will have the ability to buy cheaper tickets and use the money they saved to buy merchandise instead.
Great perspective on a new, and potentially increasingly popular, marketing technique for music artists! I find it interesting that Taylor's team is marketing this technique as a fun and unique way for fans to increase their chances of receiving better tickets, when in fact it serves as a way for Taylor and her team to increase profits. I wonder what the difference in merchandise and album sales will be for this album in comparison to her past albums based on this new "Taylor Tix" technique. It'll be interesting to see if this marketing ploy returns huge profits or negative PR storms.
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