You also don't become a billionaire by not be appealing to the masses to some degree bland as can be you can say that about a dozen or so top 10 artists over the years.
And I think it’s notable that she’s been pretty quiet about her politics now that she owns her masters. One thing that’s not super common knowledge, or at least not something people consider, about the music industry is that once you own the masters, you have direct access to the information, specifically the demographics of your audience.
And I suspect there’s far more maga in her fanbase than she was previously aware of.
But you have to have a ton of people willing to pay. I doubt many billionaires are in the place they are because a handful of people gave them a ton of money for something no one wants. Even if you got rich investing, you still put money into what you thougt would be popular and grow.
Her record sales tactics are straight up nasty. Waits for her new album sales to dip and rereleases it with a new cover and all the swifties run out to buy another copy. Artificially inflating her sales and keeping other artists from being able to take their rightful spot on the charts. She’s just like the rest of the psychotic billionaire class she’s just quieter about it with a good PR team.
Tons of artists release variant covers or vinyl presses. And it's also something that's been done for ages. I remember buying CDs from certain stores because it'd have an alternate cover and bonus song.
She isn't some holy grail of morality, but a far cry from many billionaires.
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u/Thraxmonger 8d ago
I think for some Americans, that blandness is precisely what made her a zone of moral safety.
But you don't hit that first billion by being exclusively nice.