Each editor: Du Yu
On April 3, Beijing time, Forbes released the 38th Global Billionaires List. htmlThe 234-year-old American music queen Taylor Swift (nicknamed "Taylor Swift") has officially entered the rich list. With a net worth of US$1.1 billion (approximately RMB 8 billion), she has become the first person in history to rely solely on her music and acting income. , and became a billionaire artist.
Swift also has an enviable real estate investment portfolio, owning houses in New York, Beverly Hills, Nashville, and a mansion with ocean views in Rhode Island.
According to Brokerage China, Swift's "Times Tour" was held in Singapore for six consecutive times in March this year, which not only brought huge economic benefits to the host country, but also made fans around the world crazy about it to an unprecedented degree. . The concert started on March 2 and ended on March 9, attracting more than 300,000 fans from Singapore and other countries around the world, which is equivalent to 5.3% of Singapore's total population. For a time, Singapore's hotels were full, consumption data was strong, and there was a massive shortage of even temporary jobs. This economic phenomenon was called "slut economics" by the outside world. Economists also raised their first-quarter growth forecasts for Singapore's economy, with some attributing the growth in part to the economic impact of Swift's concerts.
"Times Tour" is Swift's first global tour in five years. It will start in March 2023 and continue until the end of 2024. It plans to hold 151 concerts around the world, making it her most ambitious tour to date. . According to Bloomberg, the ticket sales of Swift's "Times Tour" in the United States alone exceeded US$700 million, and this does not include the ticket sales of her 89-day international tour. Pollstar estimates that it grossed $1.04 billion in the first 60 performances alone.
According to previous reports by Zhi News, the Singaporean government provided subsidies of up to US$3 million for each of Swift's concerts, and set out conditions requiring Singapore to become the only stop in Southeast Asia for the "eras tour". The Singapore government's massive investment has certainly paid off, attracting fans from many Asian countries to snap up tickets, book flights and hotels.
Picture source: @正报
Even if it is unable to host Swift's tour, Singapore's surrounding countries are also eager to get a share of the pie. Malaysia hopes fans can stop by and travel to the Singapore-Malaysia border. Indonesia, across the sea from Singapore, has also seen business opportunities and invested one trillion Indonesian rupiah (approximately 460 million yuan) in a tourism fund, aiming to introduce music, sports and cultural events into the country and attract international tourists.
It is estimated that in the first half of last year, Swift's 52 performances in the United States generated approximately US$5 billion (approximately RMB 36 billion) in GDP for the United States. At the end of the year, Time magazine selected a single artist as Person of the Year for the first time. Swift has also become one of the few people in the world who has accumulated more than $1 billion in assets through music alone. Question Pro, a foreign data analysis agency, once pointed out that if Swift were an economy, its size would exceed 50 small countries, and it could be called a walking GDP.
For a superstar like Swifty, are the benefits that her concerts can have on the economy of a country or region exaggerated? What is the actual economic impact?
Zhang Xiaoquan, the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Chair Professor of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, analyzed that it is undeniable that Swift has indeed had a huge impact on the economy and culture, whether it is the fan economy or the consumption stimulation brought by the concert to the local area. But the twist is that the gains for businesses and employees in the concert spotlight may come from businesses that lose customers as a result.
To have an economic impact, spending (consumption) must be considered "new spending (consumption)" rather than being transferred from one business to another. Fans collectively spend millions of dollars to attend concerts, but this spending does not exactly equate to generating economic activity or adding money to the economy.
When people choose to attend a concert, the budget prepared for the concert or the funds beyond the budget may have been spent on other places or other entertainment projects.For example, the extra expenditure on tickets may be reduced accordingly on other aspects such as food, clothing, housing and transportation. In other words, the economic effect of concerts may only be the result of the reallocation of consumption in the local economy, rather than an actual increase in economic activity.
Swift was born on December 13, 1989 in Pennsylvania, USA. She is an American female singer, songwriter, music producer, and actress. In 2006, she released her first music album "Taylor Swift". In November 2008, she released her second album "fearless", which topped the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart for 11 weeks and was certified 6x platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album won the 52nd She won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year; in October 2014, she released her fifth album "1989", which sold more than 1.28 million copies in the first week of release, becoming the highest first-week sales record in the U.S. record market in the past 12 years. With this album, he became the only singer to have three million-dollar first-week sales.
Since her debut, Swift has released 243 songs and won 14 Grammy Awards, 40 American Music Awards, 39 Billboard Music Awards and 23 VMAs (MTV Music Television Awards). She is the only living singer in the world who has had 10 albums selected into the US Billboard charts at the same time. She is also the first musician in history to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year four times.
At the age of 26, Swift set a Guinness World Record for the highest annual income for a female musician with an annual income of US$170 million (approximately RMB 1.2 billion). Currently, Swift has 280 million fans on the social platform Instagram, and the number of fans online exceeds 450 million. Today, the 34-year-old Swift has transformed from the country music singer who played and sang with her guitar to a "diva" figure in the global music industry. Taylor Swift has also become the first billionaire in the world who relies solely on music as a source of income, and can be called the "richest man" in the global music industry.
Daily Economic News Comprehensive Brokerage China, Direct News
Daily Economic News
