Taylor Swift’s Midnights playbook for sustaining superstardom

As an artist whose rise to prominence coincided with the rise of streaming, Taylor Swift was able to build a massive listener base in less congested times, benefitting from all the democratising impacts of streaming before it gave way to over-saturation and hyper-fragmentation. This gives Swift many advantages in today’s landscape. However, it is harder than ever for any artist — yes, even superstars — to attract and sustain attention. Swift’s Midnights strategy offers a playbook for artists of her time to do so.

Because cultural music moments that occurred before peak attention are often remembered better, artists like Swift have a greater ability to capitalise on familiarity, whether that means releasing new music or not. Swift’s October 2022 album Midnights, which she described as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout [her] life”, is a clear example. While the songs are new to fans, they nod to relationships, themes, and musical styles covered in previous albums. Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ intends to do the same, offering a “journey through all of [her] musical eras”.   

In today’s hyper-fragmented music landscape, stars may shy away from surprise albums and cryptic marketing, which attract superfans but risk bypassing the mainstream population. This may be part of the reason why Swift returned to a traditional album rollout for Midnights, a contrast to 2020’s Evermore and Folklore, which were both surprise albums. The paradox of fragmentation is that if everyone is spreading their consumption across many different songs and artists, the rare artist who can get a mass of consumers listening to the same music at the same time has a clearer path to the top. With her traditional album rollout and mass listener base, Swift did just that, becoming the first artist in history to occupy the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.

Finally, while the successful artists of Swift’s time have built large audiences, they are often less connected to their superfan bases. By contrast, Swift has long cultivated both, with secret “easter egg”-style messages, cheeky merchandise (like an actual cardigan for hit ‘Cardigan’), and connecting one-on-one with fans, once even sending superfans Christmas presents.

All these dynamics and tactics helped Swift achieve record-breaking release-week streams and sales with Midnights, which sold 1 million copies in the United States in its first week, while Ticketmaster postponed sales for ‘The Eras Tour’ due to “historically unprecedented demand”. Of course, there is no cut-and-paste strategy for success, and no artist quite like Swift. But her playbook serves as an example of how artists of her time can play to their advantages, and minimise their weaknesses, in today’s environment.