Weeks 8 & 9: Concluding Opening Act Research and Final Stages of Interviews

Hello, and welcome back to my Senior Project Blog! I decided to combine my Week 8 and Week 9 posts, and throughout these two weeks, I have continued to delve into all aspects of my research question, conducting interviews to understand the quantitative data I have collected.

To begin, I finalized my analysis of Swift’s opening acts. I did a deep dive into Gracie Abrams, daughter of director J.J. Abrams who rose to fame with her hit songs “21” and “i miss you, i’m sorry.” As seen in the graphs to the right, there is significant fluctuation in her stats, likely because her 30 Eras shows were spread out from April to August 2023. Yet, Abrams remains consistent with Swift’s other openers, seeing an overall decline in engagement and listeners despite a few short-term spikes.

However, it is interesting to note that as her Eras shows began in early April 2023, although she was experiencing a decline in stats such as her Spotify Monthly Listeners, Abrams was also experiencing an increasing Spotify Fan Conversion Rate (followers becoming monthly listeners). This echoes the sentiments of NYU Professor Robert Weitzner who I spoke with during Week 7. He had stated that the goal of opening for a show like the Eras Tour is growing an artist’s audience/fan base. Based on the graph to the left, it seems as though Abrams is succeeding with this. Despite some data that would imply opening acts are not seeing any substantial shift in their careers, graphs like these indicate that they may be doing exactly what professionals like Weitzner deem to be most important – taking advantage of the opportunity to build their audience. To prove this point further, when Abrams released her new song “Risk” on May 1st of this year, she saw a huge spike in her engagement and listeners (see

graphs to the right). There is almost a vertical line in engagement rank and a very steep increase in monthly listeners. Based on data examined in previous weeks, it is unlikely that this steep increase will be sustained, but it is clear that there are more eyes on Abrams. She has a larger audience engaged with her work and listening to the new music she puts out. Abrams has built a new audience, interested in what she will do next – exactly what Mr. Weitzner stated was the most impactful part of opening for the Eras Tour. 

After Ed Sheeran opened for Swift’s Red Tour from March to September 2013, his subsequent 2014 album x saw massive success, earning him his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and selling about 210,000 copies within his first week. Following that, his 2017 album ÷ sold (including streaming) 451,000 album units and made $5 million on Spotify in its first week. To put this success into perspective with the Eras Tour, the Red Tour received significantly less media attention, grossing a total of only $150 million compared to the Eras Tour which has already grossed over $1 billion (and she still has a lot of European and North American dates to go!) The Eras Tour has a lot more attention, and thus, Swift’s opening acts have the potential to follow a path similar to Ed Sheeran, if not even greater, as long as they approach the opportunity with the right strategy and a long-term growth mindset.

Additionally, these past two weeks, I continued to understand Swift’s industry impact. Many view Swift as an anomaly in the music business. As Amit Nerurkar, Hip Hop Ambassador for the Artist & Labels Team at Bandcamp, stated in our recent conversation, “Benchmarking your success against [Taylor’s] is just going to always make you fail. The touring industry is not as successful as Taylor Swift’s tour.” He stated that his team manages artists in the same way Swift’s team does for her. However, the difference is the fans – Swifties are the dream fan base from

an artist management perspective. Swift can make a brief post that she is going on tour, and over 3.5 million people will register for presale tickets. It is this dedication that other artists can learn from. Swift embodies the impact that building a strong, dedicated fan base has on an artist’s career – a point echoed by Lingrui Zhou, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at The University of Hong Kong who has experience in fan behavior research. Much of her understanding of Swift’s supportive fan base and the willingness to spend on the Eras Tour revealed a similar sentiment as NYU Professor Carlos Chirinos-Espin who I spoke with early in my project. Parasocial relationships and expanding community nodes coming together have been vital to Swift’s success and teach other artists that a vocal, vibrant, and engaged fandom culture is truly what brings an artist into the industry.

The impact of this is circular. Swift is not only teaching other artists what works in the business, but she is creating multiple levels of economic impact (that can also be replicated by future artists). Mr. Nerurkar introduced a new way of understanding this impact. When Swift had her first European show in Paris a few weeks ago, she added songs from her recent album The Tortured Poets Department to the setlist, and many of those new songs immediately started trending on X (formerly Twitter). Swift’s dedicated fanbase is not only helping her own success, but these social platforms are also benefiting from people wanting to share and comment on Swift’s tour. There is a huge knock-on effect of Swift’s interconnected, vibrant fandom using social media as a mode for Swift-based discussion. As my off-site advisor Ms. Peterson stated, if we were working at X or Instagram as Swift’s European leg began, we would all be celebrating because of the engagement it brought. If other artists attempt to follow in Swift’s footsteps, these knock-on effects can continue to cause industries to thrive.

Finally, I also continued to examine what I typically deem the economic impact of the Eras Tour – its impact on local economies. To do so, I spoke with a contact at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who stated she was surprised to see how much Taylor Swift was being discussed from an economics perspective. She echoed many of the sentiments I read about in the 1994 journal article in Week 4, where researchers from Texas A&M University presented the limitations of trying to quantify the economic impact of festivals and other music events. Although she personally observed her friends traveling and spending huge amounts of money to attend the Eras Tour, through the lens of an economist, she was slightly skeptical that some of the data I have scrapped in previous weeks was not exaggerated by media outlets. Although a “projected gross of $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone” may receive a lot of views for TIME Magazine, she and some of her colleagues believe that limited commentary on the “Swift effect” from a few professionals gained traction and got blown out of proportion. Yet, it is nonetheless true that Swift brings significant tourism to the cities she visits, and cities like Cincinnati and Kansas City really do feel an impact when an event the size of the Super Bowl, or larger, comes into town.

These past two weeks, I conducted more interviews as I wrapped up some of my research, concluding my opening act analysis and preparing the final interviews I will be conducting for industry and local economy impact. I’m excited to start compiling my data into my final deliverable in the following weeks.