Taylor Swift Just Pulled Off the Savviest Business Move I’ve Seen Yet

It’s been a year for Taylor Swift. So much so that The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan says Taylor Swift should be named “Person of the Year.” That seems about right.

There’s the record-setting concert tour, the high-profile romance, an “Artist of the Year” тιтle from Apple Music, and the blockbuster concert film of her tour that is setting box office records of its own.
I do not know how she finds time to do it all, but along the way she also re-recorded and released two of her previous albums, including her most popular album ever–1989–which set even more records. Then, on Monday, Swift announced that her concert movie will be available for rent on streaming services starting December 13, which happens to be her birthday.

“Hi! Well, so, basically I have a birthday coming up and I was thinking a fun way to celebrate the year we’ve had together would be to make The Eras Tour Concert Film available for you to watch at home! Very happy to be able to tell you that the extended version of the film including “Wildest Dreams,” “The Archer” and “Long Live” will be available to rent on demand in the US, Canada & additional countries to be announced soon starting on … you guessed it, December 13″

Watching this entire thing play out, it’s clear that Swift has executed a master-level marketing strategy. First, she sold out stadiums around the world. Then, when she finished her U.S. leg of the tour, she released a concert film in theaters. Finally, now that most of her fans have paid money for a ticket to the live concert, and now again for the movie version, she’s making the whole thing available to rent on streaming services like Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.

That last move might be the savviest move I’ve seen yet.
Seriously, is there another content creator on the planet that could get fans to pay for basically the same concert three different times? I know there are plenty of bands that have an extremely loyal following of fans, but not at this scale. It’s also worth mentioning that Swift is giving her fans an extra reason to pay to rent the streaming version, which she says will contain three songs from the tour that didn’t make the edited film version.
To be clear, I’m not knocking Swift at all. This entire thing has been a masterclass in knowing your audience and giving them exactly what they want. It just so happens that the thing her fans want very much is to give her lots of money for more of her concert tour.

I think there’s also something remarkable about the fact that Swift picked her own birthday to release the film on streaming. Swift is nothing if not intentional about cultivating her own narrative, and releasing the movie to fans on her own birthday is the perfect next chapter of this fairy tale.
Obviously, this was inevitable. It would be ridiculous not to release the concert on streaming services. The only question was when? Now we know the answer.
Still, there’s a really simple lesson here: Thinking about your fans is good for business. Few brands are more in touch with, or protective of, their fans than Swift is. Those fans repay her not just with loyalty, but with their cash. That’s why this might be the savviest business move I’ve seen yet.