Upon arriving at Radius as a Online Marketing Intern, I received a pretty quick reputation as a dude who loves Taylor Swift. I don’t regret this because, after all, it is incredibly true. She is an incredible marketer and that is what drove her to sell 1.3 million albums in one week. No one has done this since 2002. But what has led to a lot of publicity is the fact that she removed her music from Spotify. How could she do this?! I want to listen to her music using my subscription fee, not actually purchasing the album! Clearly, it was a smart move as no other artist has been able to have that much success in recent history.
Everyday at Radius, I look at numbers. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. Sometimes I have no idea what I am looking at. And most of the time I know exactly what I am looking at but don’t know how to look at it in a way that creates value for Radius. However, when the moment comes where you finally realize what the numbers are telling you, the feeling is like nothing else. It is like you found buried treasure or scored the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl (ok, maybe not that cool, but its pretty awesome). This is what I believe happened when Taylor and her people decided to remove their music from Spotify.
I believe they looked at their options, saw that they had the power to be able to continue selling music, not through the popular method of the time, and they made a tough decision. They saw that Spotify isn’t going away, but their initial release of this album will be. Had they unveiled it on Spotify they would have lost many sales from people who wouldn’t have purchased the album (myself included). Payouts for an entire year from Spotify plays for an artist like Taylor Swift can reach up to $6 million dollars, according to Spotify (although, Taylor Swift’s CEO claims only $500,000). That is a significant chunk of change. However, by removing her album, she was able to reach that goal in one week. One. Week. And once the market for Taylor’s CD has played itself out in a month or two, I will bet that you can find her album right there on Spotify seeking that $6 million that she can now get on top of the sales she just generated from selling her album separately. This is a group of people who looked at the numbers, saw that they were in a position to generate an incredible amount of value, made a tough decision, and succeeded in a big way.
Taylor Swift is an incredible artist who makes great music. But it is her business-minded decisions and marketing that will make her remain atop the music world.