The strategic genius of Taylor Swift (w/ Master Fixer Kevin Evers)(Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

Anne Morriss: Frances, you do not identify as a Swiftie. Is that an accurate representation? 

Frances Frei: It is, but to be fair, I don't really listen to music very casually because it's just too stressful for me. So it's no knock on Taylor. 

Anne Morriss: That's true. That's fair. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. Are you a Swiftie, my love? 

Anne Morriss: So I listen to her music, I attend her concerts, but I don't know if that's enough to qualify.

Frances Frei: You gave out Taytay friendship bracelets at Halloween. Just lemme add to the data. And there was a Taylor Swift skeleton in our yard until Christmas. And how do we know it was a Taylor Swift skeleton? Because she was covered with friendship bracelets. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: And it said take one, share one. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

She was also wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jersey. 

Frances Frei: And she was wearing a Kansas City... so it was if you know, you know. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: And here's what was amazing to me. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: That skeleton was swarmed across ages, genders. Taylor Swift was universal over Halloween. 

Anne Morriss: Yes. She was loved. That's why it took me so long to take her down.

But your point is well taken. I think we can go ahead and call me a Swiftie.

Welcome to Fixable, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Anne Morriss. I'm a company builder and leadership coach. 

Frances Frei: And I'm your co-host, Frances Frei. I'm a Harvard Business School professor, and I'm Anne's wife. 

Anne Morriss: This is a show where we try to fix all kinds of workplace problems, and we love talking to our Master Fixers who are experts at solving different problems themselves.

Today we are looking to the ultimate master, Ms. Taylor Swift for some inspiration. 

Frances Frei: Um, is Taylor joining us today? 

Anne Morriss: Uh, very sadly, she was not available to come on the show. She's recovering from a big award season circuit, as you of course know, Frances. But we have the next best thing, which is Kevin Evers. He's a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of a really insightful new book, Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. 

Frances Frei: As the non Swiftie in this conversation, I have really admired the impact and the endurance of what she's built. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's really the lens we wanna bring to this conversation today. What can all of us learn from Taylor as an entrepreneur and strategist and innovator?

Kevin Evers, welcome to Fixable. 

Kevin Evers: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 

Anne Morriss: So Kevin, you have written a book about a woman who's the most talked about and dissected human being that's walking the planet right now. Why did you decide to take on this project and add your voice to this glorious chorus? 

Kevin Evers: Well, I came up with the idea in early 2022, so this was before the Eras Tour was announced, and... 

Anne Morriss: Before she single handedly kept us out of a recession.

Kevin Evers: Yes, exactly. The Eras Tour grossed over $2 billion. That's twice as much as the second place concert tour, which was Coldplay's. And in 2024 alone, she alone, her streams and sales, represented close to 2% of the total music market. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Kevin Evers: Right? You don't reach this level of success and popularity 20 years into your career without having great entrepreneurial instincts.

So I didn't approach this book any differently than I would if I was writing a book about Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos. I think Taylor is, is that good, and her popularity right now is staggering. So she's not only a superstar, she's a megastar, and I'm not even sure that really describes who she is at this point in her career.

Frances Frei: May I ask how many times you attended the Eras Tour? 

Kevin Evers: Twice. It was like top three dad moment. It was like my son's birth, my daughter's birth. But I think the Eras Tour, especially the first time we went, was top three dad moment for sure. 

Anne Morriss: Uh, strategic genius is a very strong phrase. When did you realize that there was something much more to her story than beyond being this wildly talented pop star?

Kevin Evers: The more and more I did research on her, the more and more I realized she's such a great decision maker. Right? And you can go back very early on in her career. She's 14, 15 years old in songwriting rooms with men three to four times her age. And the consensus in country music was, uh, I don't think there's a market for teenage girls. Right? And she knew better, and of course it's worked out for her. 

Anne Morriss: What is your theory of the case for the life experiences or personal attributes or influences that allowed her to think so boldly and differently at such a young age? 

Kevin Evers: Her parents played a huge role. A lot of it came from Taylor herself, though.

She had such a clear vision that she wanted to write her own songs, which again, in Nashville wasn't really common. It's usually done by professional songwriters, especially for someone her age, especially a teenager, and she wanted to write those songs for an audience of her peers. Again, country music was not going after the teenage girl market at the time.

Frances Frei: Mm-hmm. 

Kevin Evers: And maybe she was naive enough to persist, but she did. And that was one of the most surprising things is how clear of a vision she had very early on at an early age, and how headstrong she was and how persistent she was in trying to realize that vision. 

Anne Morriss: How would you characterize that vision?

Kevin Evers: Hyper specific. She faced so much resistance, and that hyper specificity of what she wanted to do enabled her to make bold decisions that on paper seemed like not so great business decisions, maybe. She had a development deal with RCA, one of the biggest labels on Nashville's Music Row. And she decided to leave that development deal. And she ended up signing up with a man named Scott Borchetta who formed his own label. But that label didn't have funding. It didn't have a headquarters. It didn't even have a name at the time, but he believed in her vision and he told her, I'm never going to tell you to write someone else's songs. So I think that hyper specificity of that vision is what really enabled her to push through. 

Anne Morriss: And on the strategic chess board, that was wide open, to your point. 

Kevin Evers: Wide open. Without a doubt. Yeah. I mean, it's a classic blue ocean strategy. It's straight out of an entrepreneur's playbook. She seized an opportunity that other people were ignoring. 

Anne Morriss: What's your explanation for the enduring depth of her relationship with her so-called customers here? 

Kevin Evers: She is extremely fan obsessed. Right? Jeff Bezos would call customer obsessed. And Jeff Bezos has a great quote, one of his shareholder letters, and I'm paraphrasing, but he says something like, our customers are delightfully dissatisfied. Like they may tell us that they love what we do, but deep down, they always want more. And it's our job to continually delight them. And that fits Taylor Swift to a T, right? You can see it in the way that she's invited fans into her home for listening parties. Now, that's pretty extreme. I'm not a famous person, but I don't even answer the doorbell whenever it's, you know. And we saw it in the Eras Tour too. She could have played a greatest hit show. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Kevin Evers: For two hours, and I think fans would've walked away happy. But instead she plays three and a half hours, she plays over 40 songs. And it's that type of fan obsession that keeps her fans coming back for more.

Anne Morriss: One of our theories is that she took the experience, the life experience of her customers deadly seriously.

Kevin Evers: Yes.

Anne Morriss: In a world that often dismissed. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. Yes. 

Anne Morriss: Those experiences as trivial. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. 

Anne Morriss: Does that resonate with your research? 

Kevin Evers: Oh, oh, for sure. Historically, artists who have predominantly female fan bases, especially young female fan bases, are not taken seriously. And Taylor received a lot of criticisms early on in her career, and I would say it's because of that reason, because of who she was. She was a teenager, and who she was writing and performing songs for: other teenagers. I think of the Beatles. The Beatles obviously were a huge success, but early on they received a lot of criticism. The term Beatlemania, it has "mania" in it. It's as if female fan bases aren't driven by artistic integrity. And of course that's a bunch of B.S. Right? And Taylor has always catered to that audience, and she's grown with that audience. And even, even when she's faced pretty harsh criticisms about it, she's doubled and tripled down on what she does best.

Anne Morriss: Yeah, she's really elevated the emotions of girls and women to a high art and has filled stadiums as she explores it. 

Kevin Evers: That's why it was so fantastic for me, because I was bringing my daughter and she knows all the lyrics and she was singing along. But the vibes in the community were next level. I've gone to so many concerts in my life, and this was on a whole other level.

Anne Morriss: Yeah. I went to LA SoFi Stadium. I had never experienced anything like that. 

Kevin Evers: Yeah. Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: So one thing I was reminded of in that stadium, because I was at the concert where she was announcing various things and you know, QR codes and links to buy and to reserve your, and all this stuff. She is unapologetically a capitalist but seems to lose no authenticity points from her fans for this. So how has she managed to pull that off, do you think? 

Kevin Evers: Part of the reason for this is she could have sold her tickets for way more, right? Because if you look at the secondary market, the tickets were astronomical, in the thousands of dollars. Now, Ticketmaster is notorious for using dynamic pricing, and if there's thousands of people, millions of people in the queue trying to get tickets, they're gonna increase the price of tickets. And she didn't do that. And ticket pricing is an extremely emotional transaction for a lot of us because we do feel so closely to the artists that we love. But imagine if dynamic pricing was on and all of a sudden you have tickets in your queue and there are thousands of dollars, that would've been a huge problem.

I think Taylor's always understood that fan relationship is critical, and even though if she might be losing some money on the ticket prices, she's gaining a lot more from fostering those relationships, cultivating those relationships. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. She personally was coming nowhere near people's willingness to pay.

Kevin Evers: Right. 

Anne Morriss: Which was such an act of goodwill. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. 

Anne Morriss: It's such a beautiful reminder of pricing as an emotional experience for your customers. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. Yes. And what the, what the Eras Tour, the social phenomenon was the live streams. So many people were live streaming the concerts, and she could have found a way to monetize that. She made over $2 billion from the Eras Tour, I'm sure she had the means to put up live streams and have people pay for them. But she didn't, 'cause I think she also understands that social influence and allowing her fans to be part of the story that she's trying to tell is more important than trying to monetize every single thing that she can.

Frances Frei: It's such an amazing dance of restraint and leaning in. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. 

Frances Frei: It's like a, the conductor and a maestro knowing when to push each lever. 

Kevin Evers: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Kevin Evers: So it is such a fine balance between what can I monetize, what can I drive fans toward, while also showing incredible restraint at the same time.

Anne Morriss: So Kevin, let's talk about her as an innovator. What do you think are the top two or three most innovative decisions that she made that made the difference for her career? 

Kevin Evers: The most recent one is her decision to rerecord her older music. Like most artists, Taylor Swift didn't own her master recordings, right? So for her original six albums, her former label sold those recordings to a man named Scooter Braun and a private investment firm. Taylor had no control over that. She made no profit off of that sale, and because they were sold, she had no control over really what was done with that music. Right? So it's all about ownership and control. For someone who has built her career on such a personal brand and a deep connection with her fans, having that music sold from out from underneath her life's work was a devastating thing for her. So she decides, well, if I don't have any control over this, I am going to rerecord that old music. She found a legal loophole. But it shouldn't have worked because she was essentially telling her fans, don't listen to the old music that you've built such a long relationship and emotional connection to, listen to the new stuff. And they did. 

Anne Morriss: And it was mostly the same music and renamed Taylor's Version. But then... 

Kevin Evers: Renamed, yes. 

Anne Morriss: She brought something new to each of these recordings.

Kevin Evers: She has four re-recordings that have been released and she has two more to go. And those four re-recording have reached number one in the Billboard charts. They, they were big releases. 

Anne Morriss: I love that as an example. Give us one or two more of just different choices that really blew you away while you were doing this research.

Kevin Evers: Her full-on move to pop music. This was another decision that on paper seemed like not such a good idea, 'cause for the longest time she could have her cake and eat it too. She had cornered the country market and then increasingly her music was played on pop radio as well. Right? And around 2014 when she made that full pivot to pop music, country music and pop music accounted for about 25% of the total music market. So she had cornered both markets and her personal tastes were moving more toward pop music. And she made that bold decision to go full on pop and leaving country music completely behind. And Taylor understood that her fans have a deep connection with her and her own life. So if she was changing, if she felt like her musical tastes were changing, then it was imperative for her to make that change because it'd be inauthentic if she didn't. 

Frances Frei: You know, usually markets leave us. 

Kevin Evers: Yep. 

Frances Frei: And we're sad. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. 

Frances Frei: And she left a successful market. I think it absolutely hits the measure of really bold and just incredible. 

Anne Morriss: In those rare moments when Taylor has lost any trust with her fans, what can the rest of us learn from how she rebuilt that trust? 

Kevin Evers: Reputation was a critical era for Taylor, because for the longest time had built her star persona off of being a, you know, a very kind, humble superstar, right? But a lot of people questioned that authenticity, and then she had this controversy with Kanye West that seemed to prove that she might be faking it, although it turned out that wasn't the case, and it turned into a huge social media firestorm.

And Taylor did something that she'd never done before. She disappeared for a year and she comes out with Reputation. She embraced the bad things that people were saying about her, like a classic narrative reversal, right? Her first single, she talks about all the bad things people are saying about her. And what's great about that is she went back to her music, she put the rebuttal in her music, and she turned it into a moment of empowerment for her and her fans, and she's always done this. Every time she faces some kind of controversy, she always finds a way to make it about self-growth and empowerment. She did it back in 2019, people were heavily criticizing her for her talent.

They didn't think she was good enough. And what does she do? She doubles and triples down at what she does best, her third album, she decides to write the album all by herself with no co-writers, and she uses that as part of the promotional campaign for the album. She, she essentially said, Hey, take it or leave it. If you don't believe I'm talented enough, well, I'm doing this all by myself. What do you think? 

Anne Morriss: I love that. Do you think she's made any material mistakes from a business perspective? 

Kevin Evers: Her biggest mistake, and this is a classic business problem, she was in a premium position for so long that she became the victim of her own success.

And one of the biggest things that she was slow to was the streaming age. Now, a big part of this is even way back in 2014, she could sell albums like it was 1985. She was really the only artist who was selling physical albums, over a million physical albums per album, and it was more economically feasible for her to focus on that.

And she had a very famous battle with Daniel Eck, the co-founder of Spotify, and she pulled all of her catalog from Spotify back in 2014. But as 2019 rolls around, 2020, Spotify's user base had grown over 700%. She couldn't ignore streaming anymore. But since she hadn't really adapted her strategies in those intervening years, she was left a bit flat-footed. Right? And that album was her eighth studio album, Lover. It did extremely well by anyone else's standards, but by the standards of Taylor Swift it, it didn't do so well. And I'd argue that her career had plateaued at that point. But like a good business person, she pivots. 

Anne Morriss: Like the strategic genius you wrote about.

Kevin Evers: Exactly, yeah. And she turns on the content fire hose. For the longest time, she was very precious about her releases. Every two years she'd release a new album, it'd have major fanfare. She'd make a huge media push. But then she turned more prolific. Since 2020, she's released four new studio albums and then those four rerecords, so that's eight albums. They've all gone to number one on the Billboard charts and her fandom has increased, right? The Eras Tour, at the height of the Eras Tour, between 200 to 300 million TikTok videos were viewed each day on Taylor Swift, and a big reason for that is because she turned on that content fire hose, right? For, for years and years and years, there's always a new album. Every few months it seemed like there was new music and a new album for fans to listen to and to speculate about online. 

Anne Morriss: There's still this principle that scarcity drives value. And how is she able to defy that, do you think? 

Kevin Evers: A lot of this has to do with fan engagement. Her fan community never sleeps.

It's 24/ 7. They're always insatiable market demand, insatiable. They're always speculating. They're always listening to the music. They're always analyzing lyrics. So that's a huge part of it too, and that's something she's built up over two decades. But there is some scarcity to our strategy too, because as someone who is our first extremely online superstar, her fame and her rise in country music and pop music coincided with the rise of social media.

She's not chronically online anymore, really. She doesn't engage as much online, but in some ways that's actually increased engagement too, 'cause her absence only causes more speculation with her fans. She really understands that her job isn't just to write great music and she does write great music.

It's to make sure that fans feel that vulnerability and connection and that they feel a part of everything that she's doing. 

Anne Morriss: The operations term is co-creation. 

Kevin Evers: Yes. 

Anne Morriss: Or co-production. 

Frances Frei: Co-production. That's what I wrote my tenure packet on. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. Frances Frei has been thinking about this for a very long time.

Frances Frei: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: But I don't know Frances, that you've ever connected it to this framing. 

Frances Frei: I'm so persuaded. I mean, Kevin, I have scarcely learned as much about business as I have in listening to you through this conversation. One of the things we talk about is that we understand something so deeply that we can describe it simply, and you have just given us a masterclass in that.

Kevin Evers: Yes. 

Anne Morriss: Well, Kevin, it's been such a privilege to host you on the show and have this conversation with you. 

Kevin Evers: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.

Anne Morriss: Frances, did we convert you? Are you a Swiftie at the end of this conversation? 

Frances Frei: Oh, well no Swiftie would take me as a Swiftie, but my admiration for both Taylor and Kevin are sky high, and I genuinely learned so much from his taking a business and strategy lens and applying it to an unusual context. And it was a beautiful way of how you learn through case studies and with a really deep connection to the protagonist.

Anne Morriss: What are you gonna take away from this conversation? 

Frances Frei: Walking away from success, I think is a really big deal. Companies that have success, they try to continue to have success. And that's not what Amazon does and that's not what Taylor does. They wanna be much better versions of themselves tomorrow than they are today.

And I can't remember the exact phrase, but the dis pleasantly, or whatever the phrase of the unpleasantly dissatisfied or something, I'm gonna take away the, we need to inject that, for innovation, we have to inject that because our customers might seduce us into thinking they're all set. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: And this easily activated dissatisfaction, I think there's real power behind that. 

Anne Morriss: So, Frances, we, we threw this word co-production around. Give us the, give us a sexy definition. 

Frances Frei: Ooh. Well, usually production and consumption are separated. So I produce something, I sell it to you, you consume it. We don't do it in each other's presence. Co-production is when I participate in the production of the service, it's almost always a service I'm gonna then consume. 

Anne Morriss: I as a customer are part of the production team. 

Frances Frei: Yeah, so for example, when I'm consuming healthcare from my physician, well, my decision to eat right and exercise.

Anne Morriss: Oh yeah, I got a big role in whether I'm healthy.

Frances Frei: I got a big role. It's not just my physician that's producing the healthcare. We are co-producing the healthcare that I am consuming. And co-production, it turns out, can unlock lots of, lots and lots of things.

Anne Morriss: Yeah, 'cause I know a lot more about me, uh, as a customer than you do. And I can bring all that knowledge to designing this product. 

Frances Frei: So as an example, when I co-produce it, I can personalize it at scale. 

Anne Morriss: I think the thing that's gonna stick with me is the power of real co-production with your customers.

So the superstar makes the music, puts it in a form that is then consumed somewhere else, and yeah, they have these interactions maybe in a concert. When you pull back the lens, I really think it is this beautiful example of Taylor and her fans coming together and producing, creating something so much bigger than just a pop star on, on a stage.

And my suspicion is that it is about really validating their experience in a way that no other part of their lives can deliver. 

Frances Frei: Every leader out there can be thinking, how can I partner with my customers to add wildly more value with them than I could without them? It's a really compelling thought, worthy of tenure at the Harvard Business School. I'm gonna go ahead and say. 

Anne Morriss: Alright Frances, we're gonna end it there, but this is not the last time Taylor Swift is gonna come up in conversation. 

Frances Frei: I'm gonna bring Taylor Swift up in conversation.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. You co-produced this with us. Your participation helps us make great episodes. Please continue to do so.

Anne Morriss: If you wanna figure out a workplace problem together, reach out, send us a message, email, call, text. We're at fixable@ted.com or 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253. We read and listen to every one of your messages, so please do not be shy.

Fixable is a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

Frances Frei: And me, Frances Frei. 

Anne Morriss: This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Daniella Balarezo, and Roxanne Hai Lash. 

Frances Frei: And our show is mixed by Louis at Story Yard.