Taylor Swift’s Eras tour has catapulted her to billionaire status, according to a new report from Bloomberg, making her one of the few recording artists to build a 10-figure fortune almost entirely from her music.
The “most definitive account yet” of the 33-year-old pop star’s wealth claims that the singer, who has broken box office records with her Eras tour concert film ($92.8m in its opening weekend) and is expected to top the charts again this weekend with the re-release of her 2014 album 1989, now has a total net worth of about $1.1bn.
How Taylor Swift’s Eras tour took over AmericaRead more
The bump into billionaire territory was achieved by her blockbuster tour, which concluded its US run in August and will start an expansive international leg next month. According to the Bloomberg News analysis, the 53 concerts on the US tour added $4.3bn to the country’s gross domestic product.
Bloomberg called its analysis “conservative”, based only on “assets and earnings that could be confirmed or traced from publicly disclosed figures”.
The calculation took into account the estimated value of her five homes ($110m) and music catalog ($400m for music released since 2019), some of which she has reclaimed through an elaborate and highly public process of re-recording; earnings from streaming deals ($120m from YouTube and Spotify), music sales ($80m), concert tickets and merchandise ($370m); and the impact of income tax, tour production and travel costs, and commissions paid to managers and agents. Swift and her representatives did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.
Bloomberg estimates that the Eras tour, a 44-plus-song mega-concert that stretched to nearly three and a half hours, generated more than $700m in ticket sales to date, and that’s before the 89-date international leg. After a purchasing gauntlet that prompted a congressional investigation into Ticketmaster, the average ticket price was $254, though many spent far more on the resale market. Her pre-tax profit from the Eras tour, to date, is about $225m – nearly twice that of her Reputation tour in 2018, her most recent outing.
“Swift has evolved from a teen pop-country phenom to a world-famous celebrity, while maintaining an earnest, girl-with-a-guitar image that belies the machine behind her,” Bloomberg wrote, noting that her small team includes father, Scott Swift, a longtime Merrill employee.
Scott Swift’s registered investment firm the Swift Group remains based in the singer’s home town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. A disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission links him to 10 companies affiliated with his daughter, including merchandising businesses, rights-management companies, and entities owning her tour bus, two private jets and real estate.
The outlet predicted plenty of earnings potential in Swift’s future, based on the value of her vast songwriting catalog. While the conservative estimate of her music’s worth is around $400m, Bloomberg notes a more bullish multiple of future royalties puts it around $1bn – far higher than most of her music peers. Bruce Springsteen’s catalog, sold in 2021, is worth about $550m.
