Week 5: An Introduction to Chartmetric and Philadelphia Analysis

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to my senior project blog. This week, while continuing to explore the local economies portion of my research, I began to also shift my focus to my analysis of Swift’s opening acts.

As mentioned in my first blog post, to examine my hypothesis that opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour benefitted the artists’ careers, I will primarily be relying on a database called Chartmetric. Chartmetric’s music data analytics are typically used by artists, their teams, and industry professionals to understand trends in music, how to improve marketing, Spotify monthly listeners, social media followers, and more. In order to accurately assess how exposure from the Eras Tour impacts the careers of Swift’s nine opening acts, I can use this site which scrapes data from many of the major music and social media platforms and examine how their followers and monthly listeners changed after opening for Swift’s shows. I will be able to use the site to quantitatively analyze if a short-term boost in popularity led to longer-term, sustained growth. This quantitative analysis will allow for qualitative comparison with other historically successful opening acts in order to draw conclusions about the careers of artists such as Phoebe Bridgers and MUNA. The site also allows users to track listeners by city, allowing for the boygenius Nashville study I described in my project proposal. This week, I familiarized myself with the site, learning to navigate it by using Taylor Swift, their #1 ranked artist, to explore the available data.

To the right is a visual representation of some of these analytics. In this chart, we can observe that Swift’s monthly Spotify listeners increased from approximately 80 million on March 15, 2023, two days before the Eras Tour began, to 99 million when Swift wrapped up the U.S. leg of her tour in August. Considering that Spotify had already given her a popularity index of 100/100 when the tour had first started in March, still being able to generate a 24% increase in monthly listeners is significant – a byproduct of her business strategies I have discussed in previous blog posts that makes Swift herself, her music, and her live experiences so intriguing to listeners.

Additionally, a conversation with a local business in Philadelphia, Ripleigh’s Creamery, proved extremely beneficial for my research process. The owner, Ripleigh, is a junior in high school, and I spoke with her mom, Laura, who helps her run the store and, most importantly, assists with marketing and PR. She stated that the Eras Tour weekend in Philadelphia was huge for their business. With a family of Swifties and 30 years of experience in the marketing industry, Laura knew that the weekend would be important and something they had to approach right. They decided to travel to Tampa, Florida to attend the Eras Tour in April – a month prior to Swift’s Philly shows. Laura commented that, beyond it being a fun and exciting experience, this trip was strategic. They were planning how they would approach a weekend of Swiftie-mania in Philly. They decided to create a line of Taylor-related ice cream flavors, and, based on observations at the Tampa show, encouraged fans to come to their store to trade friendship bracelets and even bought official merchandise for in-store giveaways. As a result of their strong marketing, Laura commented that people were standing in line for an hour outside their store to try their ice cream flavors. She said, “her fanbase is insane,” and one fan told them that they went to multiple of their retail locations to try as many flavors as possible. Laura stated that they made an extra $30,000 that weekend. When asked if this boom in business was sustained long-term, she commented that, as expected, it was a trend at the moment, so there was no way to sustain that level of excitement. However, due to the boom they experienced and the fact that Taylor Swift sent them flowers as a thank-you for welcoming her to Philly, they have significantly increased their name recognition. Ripleigh was invited onto news stations, made ice cream for the governor, and is now a local celebrity. Laura said that people still come into their store asking for the Taylor Swift ice cream. Our conversation made it clear that it was no coincidence that Swift’s visit brought them this much success. They were strategically capitalizing off of Swiftie Philly weekend, marketing to an audience they knew they could bring into their store.

An interview with Andrew Zwarych, a Research and Analytics Manager at Visit Philadelphia, also provided greater quantitative and qualitative analysis to discuss the Eras Tour’s effect on the local economy of Philadelphia. He stated that hotels hit an average 88% occupancy across her three days in the city, and the average daily rate (ADR) per night stay in a hotel averaged $403 – almost double compared to their $219 average for all of 2023. He commented that the city hadn’t seen those kinds of numbers since they hosted the Democratic National Convention in 2016 (pre-pandemic). He stated that the high occupancy was expected, as it typically is with large events, but it was unexpected that the ADR was so high. Other popular events like WrestleMania, which was recently hosted in Philly, experienced that same high occupancy rate without the same ADR. The ADR (he stated, “since working here, I have never seen an ADR that high”) is significant for the city because that money circulates. As described in previous blog posts, the multiplier effect comes into play when those hotels have to hire extra workers for the weekend or people pick up extra shifts due to the influx of tourists. In addition, the high occupancy is significant for the city because Visit Philadelphia knows that about 79% of people who visit will come back, and over 57% of them will return within 12 months, generating more hotel revenue, spending on local restaurants, etc. To put this into perspective with the Eras Tour, there were around 70,000 people at Lincoln Financial Field to see Taylor Swift each of her three nights, with approximately 210,000 fans total. From previous data collections, the organization knows that about 35% of the audience at Lincoln Financial Field is coming from out of town. That’s approximately 73,500 out-of-town visitors, and if 79% of them return with friends and family, that’s over 58,065 returning visitors, ready to repeat a stay in a hotel, shop at local businesses, and spend at local tourist attractions. It is data like this and anecdotal examples that allow professionals like Mr. Zwarych to affirm that live music is a strong tool for economic growth. 

Ultimately, this week, I continued to explore my research from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, gaining an introduction to Chartmetric – a site I will be spending a lot of time on in the coming weeks – and continuing my exciting interview-based analysis.