Week 3: Initial Stages of Quantitative Data Collection

Welcome back to my Senior Project Blog! Last week, I continued my literature review to scrape available quantitative data and conducted more interview-based analysis to specifically examine the booms Swift spurred in local U.S. economies. 

Following my conversation with Alexandra Kotis, I continued to delve into the idea that bringing the Eras Tour to 20 cities across the country leads to both Swift and the cities profiting (as Ms. Kotis explained, it is a mutually beneficial relationship). With existing data from only the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour, Swift’s tour has become the highest-grossing tour of all time (surpassing Elton John’s multi-year $939 million farewell tour). But this “projected gross of $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone” is only a fraction of the spending. According to The Washington Post, an average Swifite will spend a total of $1,279 attending the Eras Tour, with $396 going toward tickets, $106 toward food and drink, $159 toward merchandise, $384 toward travel and hotels, and $234 toward outfits – data I will further explore with my own proprietary survey-based research in the coming weeks. Multiple factors are coming into play here (substitution (or lack thereof), Swift effectively differentiating each show from the next with rotating surprise songs, parasocial relationships that Professor Chirinos described, etc.), but all together, this equates to spending in big numbers. A survey of 592 Swifites conducted by QuestionPro estimated that, based on fan responses and average concert attendance, Swifties spent about $93 million per show. While big cities such as LA, where Swift played six shows, far outnumbered the impact of two shows in Kansas City – $320 million vs. $48 million respectively – the boom has been impactful in each city Swift has visited, especially for cities that were struggling in the wake of the pandemic. As cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, “May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city.” Swift’s impact is so vast that we even see world leaders asking Swift to come to their countries, with the Chilean President and the mayor of Budapest hoping Swift could bring economic growth to their regions.

The primary reason this “Swiftie spending” is so impactful is due to the multiplier effect. In a conversation with Duke Professor Ed Tiryakian, we discussed that not only are Swifties spending directly (as represented in the estimated $5 billion direct economic impact), but there is also a great deal of indirect spending. Venues, hotels, and local businesses had to hire more workers to accommodate Swift’s fans, and these workers then had a higher disposable income that they could spend locally, leading to a trickle-down flow of cash. Specifically in Philadelphia, for example, the average hourly rate offered via an online hourly employment site within a 5-mile radius of Swift’s show was $2 higher than usual. Along the same lines, during Swift’s Gillette Stadium shows, the half-mile radius around the Boston area saw a 1,000% increase in demand for hourly workers. When examining this at a more macro level, these increases are what lead to the U.S. Travel Association’s estimation that the true economic impact of the Eras Tour, including both direct and indirect spending, is actually over $10 billion.

Industry professionals can also observe many smaller phenomena within the Eras Tour. For example, a friendship bracelet trading craze led to $3 million in Etsy friendship bracelet sales between April and August. With friendship bracelet sellers observing a large increase in their profit, they then have a much higher disposable income that will be spent elsewhere, using the multiplier equation (see below) to create a monetary impact far beyond the tangible

$3 million spent on the bracelets alone. People like Kara White, who started making friendship bracelets and selling them on Etsy, got orders for 1,500 bracelets each day leading up to Swift’s LA shows, generating $15,000 she usually would not have spent. This creates a cycle of indirect spending that provides a beneficial boost to the economy – what economists and journalists mean when they say Swift has had an enormous economic impact.

A conversation with Joshua Nunziato, a Sustainability Philosopher and Business Ethicist from the University of Colorado Boulder, provided some further context for the ticketing portion of my research (which I will circle back to in a couple of weeks) as well as valuable insight into the current “experience economy” we live in. When asked for his thoughts on Swift’s impact on local economies across the U.S., he commented that booms spurred by experiential purchases as opposed to material items represent a hope for a more sustainable future – a country fueled by desirable experiences as opposed to desirable items. When looking at the final goal of my research – understanding how the music and concert industries act as a vehicle for economic growth – it is interesting to consider how this type of concert-based growth appears to be more environmentally sustainable. The music industry could be a useful tool to answer more global issues than simply slowed economic growth. Additionally, a conversation with Alexa Burnston in A&R Administration at Sony Music Masterworks returned to a similar psychological basis as Professor Chirinos. With so much change in the music industry due to AI and debates over what artists truly “own”, it is the element of connection and community that fans find at events like the Eras Tour that make it both emotionally and economically impactful. As Burnston stated, there are “some things that you can’t yet make artificial” – including the unique experiential product Swift creates at the Eras Tour. 

I plan to continue this exploration into the booms Swift spurred in local economies over the next two weeks, finalizing and distributing my survey for data collection and beginning to calculate data specifically for Glendale and Philadelphia through data scraping and interviews with local businesses.