Swifties, this one’s for you. It seems like Taylor Swift's Eras Tour has lasted eons. Yet somehow, there’s always something to talk about. Just thinking about how much she’s accomplished while on tour makes me want to buckle down, lock in, and channel my inner girlboss. But while I can’t even be bothered to cook dinner at home after a long day of work, Taylor is accomplishing milestones most musicians can only dream of. Let’s recap.
The Era’s Tour began in March 2023 with its North American leg. It’s set to go until December 2024, with dates in Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America— spanning 152 shows across five continents.
As the queen of multitasking, Swift hasn’t stopped at just selling out stadiums. Since the Eras tour began, she’s released multiple albums — both new and old — and shaken up the tour setlist with each new release. Her list of new releases started on the first day of tour with “All Of The Girls You Loved Before,” which was quickly followed up by “The Alcott,” a feature on The National’s album — reciprocity for their work on her pandemic era albums, Folklore and Evermore.
She also released Midnights: Late Night Edition (including the iconic collab with Ice Spice), as well as not one but two album re-releases — Speak Now Taylor's Version and 1989 Taylor's Version. As if that wasn’t enough, she announced her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, in a GRAMMY’s acceptance speech. Talk about legendary. Since its release, she’s also been churning out deluxe versions and remixes to keep us on our toes. The Eras Tour was even made into a Blockbuster film that brought Beyonce to its premiere. Star power: confirmed.
But that’s just her work life. Her personal life is just as eventful. She ended her 7-year relationship with Joe Alwyn in April 2023. Then entered into a brief but controversial fling with 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Though it didn’t last long, the relationship was enough to inspire a whole album and catapult her into her current romance with Travis Kelce, aka Amerca’s first nepo boyfriend. Now they’re the American Royal couple — and she somehow had time to fly from tour to his Super Bowl performance.
We all have the same hours in the day as Taylor Swift, but how she uses them will always be a mystery to me. I work eight hours a day and can barely manage a social life. Meanwhile, Taylor literally has it all — though conservatives are turning on her for daring to be a woman in her 30s who’s not married with kids. If that’s not proof that women can’t do anything right, I don’t know what is.
Clearly, she’s working late because she’s a singer. No wonder Taylor Swift became a billionaire months into her tour in October 2023. Her net worth is currently around 1.3 billion dollars, making her the only female musician to become a billionaire from her music.
Other entertainment billionaires like Rihanna, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Jay-Z, and Kanye West have joined the three-comma club thanks to ventures like clothing brands, beauty products, and other entrepreneurial pursuits. Rihanna has her FENTY Empire. Kim has her award-winning SKIMS. Ye had Yeezy. But Taylor has an unbeatable catalog of publishing.
But Taylor isn’t just different from other Billionaires because of how she earned her money. She’s the Taylor we know and love because of how she spends it. Her rollercoaster Eras Tour is how she’s made much of her fortune. And she’s using it to give back in monumental degrees. From individual donations to investing in local infrastructure, Taylor is literally changing lives on a macro and micro scale. And teaching us what to expect from all billionaires in the process.
The Era’s Tour Bonuses — Talk About Workplace Benefits
First to make headlines were the Eras Tour crew bonuses. While some of us get rewarded with a pizza party or a $10 gift card to Starbucks, Taylor casually dropped $55 million in bonuses for her tour crew. The massive sum was paid out to everyone who makes the Eras Tour go around, from truck drivers to dancers and sound technicians.
In fairness, these bonuses are definitely well-deserved. Taylor’s shows are over three hours long. Imagine dancing for that long — because Swift certainly isn’t the one with the impressive moves — for hundreds of tour dates. Or remembering countless combinations of light cues to go with a setlist that changes daily. Yeah, they’re clocking in. And if my boss had millions to blow, I’d be expecting a comfortable bonus too. But $55 Million? That’s a testament to Swift’s generosity. It's like she's Oprah, but instead of cars, she's giving out life-changing amounts of cash. "You get a bonus! You get a bonus! Everybody gets a bonus!"
It’s similar to how Zendaya gave film equity to every member of the crew that worked on her controversial black-and-white drama, Malcolm & Marie. Filmed in a few days with a bare-bones crew during the peak of the pandemic, the film was Zendaya’s passion project with Sam Levinson, in which she starred alongside John David Washington. Though the film got mixed reviews, it captured the audience’s attention all the same. After all, it was Zendaya — and we’ll watch her in anything. So since the film sold to Netflix for a hefty sum, all the crew members got payouts from the deal on top of their salaries to reward their hard work.
Bonuses and equity payouts are common in many industries, but not entertainment. Even though it’s one of the most lucrative and recognizable American industries, most entertainers don’t make enough to survive. The SAG and WGA strikes last year were proof that there needs to be systemic change in the industry. LA County has even identified show businesses as risk factors for being unhoused — after all, how many stories do we hear of actors who were living in their cars before their big break? And for many, their big break never comes. For even more, they get hired on amazing gigs with giant performers … then go right back to the grind afterward. While individual actions from our favorite stars won’t fix everything, Zendaya and Taylor are providing models for how Hollywood should treat the people who make this town go round.
And in this economy, even a little bit could go a long way. Inflation and the cost of living are not a joke. Especially when, like with many creative careers, you often have to invest in lessons or equipment for your craft. With all this considered, the impact of Swirt’s donations can’t be overstated. Imagine getting a lump sum of cash for dancing to your favorite Taylor Swift tracks? Talk about a dream job.
The Economic Impact of Swift - Swiftonomics, if you will
Like Barbie and Beyonce last year, Swift is still on a tear to boost the economy of the cities she’s in just by traveling there — ad inspiring others to make the trek, too.
The Barbie movie proved that by marketing to women (instead of just making Marvel flops like Madame Web that aren’t really targeted to women at all), the entertainment industry can make giant profits. Barbie fever went beyond the theater. Thanks to a plethora of product collabs, the phenomenon rippled through retail.
Similarly, Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour tour generated an estimated $4.5 billion for the American economy. According to NPR, that’s almost as much as the entire 2008 Olympics earned for Beijing. People were taking money out of their 401ks to pay for Beyonce tickets and the glittery, silver-hues outfits to rock at her shows. Cities even started calling her effect the “Beyonce Bump.”
Swift has the same effect. She’s not just proving her generosity on a micro-scale for the people close to her, she’s having actual, tangible effects on the economy. It's like she's leaving a trail of dollar bills in her wake, and cities are scrambling to catch them like it's a country-pop, capitalist version of musical chairs.
The US Travel Association called it the Taylor Swift Impact after she generated over $5 Billion in just the first 5 months of the Eras Tour. But how does this work? It’s not like Taylor is printing more money at those shows, but it almost is. Her tour dates are pretty much economic steroid shots for local businesses. Hotels are booked solid, restaurants are packed, and let's not even get started on the surge in friendship bracelet supplies.
“Swifties averaged $1,300 of spending in local economies on travel, hotel stays, food, as well as merchandise and costumes,” say the US Travel Association. “That amount of spending is on par with the Super Bowl, but this time it happened on 53 different nights in 20 different locations over the course of five months.” That’s not to say anothing of her effect on the actual Super Bowl and the entire NFL season thanks to her ball-throwing boyfriend.
It's like she's created her own micro-economy, and everyone's invited to the party. And unlike some economic theories that rely on wealth trickling down (spoiler alert: it doesn't), Taylor's wealth is more like a t-shirt cannon or the confetti at her shows — showering everyone around.
Donations that actually do good
Taylor isn’t just stepping into cities and calling it a night. She’s also not just throwing pennies at problems - she's making significant contributions that are changing lives. And more importantly, she's using her platform to encourage her fans to do the same.
She kicked off her tour with quiet donations to food banks in Glendale, Ariz., and Las Vegas ahead of the Eras Tour. Once the tour was in full swing, she continued this practice. In Seattle, she donated to Food Lifeline, a local hunger relief organization. In Santa Clara, she showed some love to Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. And let's not forget about her $100,000 donation to the Hawkins County School Nutrition Program in Tennessee.
She’s been making similar donations overseas. Taylor Swift donated enough money to cover the food bills for an entire year across 11 food banks and & community pantries in Liverpool. Swift also covered 10,800 meals for Cardiff Foodbank and many more banks across the UK and EU. Her impact is so profound that her numbers are doing more to combat issues like hunger than the government.
Can billionaires actually be good?
One thing about me, I’m always ready and willing — knife and fork in hand — to eat the rich. Because fundamentally, can any billionaire really be good? In our late-stage capitalist horror story, the answer is usually no. Look how many of them are supporting the Trump campaign just to get some tax breaks.
But here's the thing - Taylor Swift might just be the exception that proves the rule. She's not perfect, sure. She still flies private jets and probably has a carbon footprint bigger than Bigfoot. But unlike most of the others in her tax bracket, she's not flaunting her wealth like it's a personality trait.
Take a look around. We've got billionaires trying to colonize Mars instead of, I don't know, helping people on Earth. In this context, Taylor's approach is more like Mackenzie Scott’s — Bezos’s ex-wife. She's not trying to escape to another planet - she's trying to make this one better.
And look, I'm not saying we should stop critiquing billionaires or the system that creates them. But she's just setting the bar for what we should expect from all billionaires. She's showing us that our collective power as fans can translate into real-world change. That our love for catchy choruses and bridge drops can somehow, improbably, lead to food banks getting funded and crew members getting life-changing bonuses.
So sorry to my neighbors who hear me belting “Cruel Summer” and “right where you left me” at the top of my lungs (and range). Just know it’s for the greater good.
8K Writers Can’t Be Wronged - AI Platforms “Scraping” & Stealing Bestselling Books
Close to 8 thousand writers recently signed a letter from The Authors Guild protesting the unauthorized use of their stories.
Technology is inescapably linked to the art and craft of writing. Humanity’s desire to share and preserve its thoughts, its pleasures, its discoveries, its knowledge, and its very survival led to hieroglyphics, the development of paper and ink, to the printing press, the typewriter, and the computer. Technology’s traditional aim was to make it faster and easier to create and disseminate the written word. Now it seems technology’s out to eliminate writers altogether.
Or, at the very least, the writers’ livelihoods.
NPR’s Chloe Veltman tells us that The Authors Guild – an organization founded in 1912 to “support working writers and their ability to earn a living from authorship” – is taking on “artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Meta” which use writers’ work “without permission or compensation.” As Veltman describes it, “text-based generative AI applications like GPT-4 and Bard...scrape the Web for authors' content without permission or compensation and then use it to produce fresh content in response to users' prompts”.
Approximately eight thousand writers, Veltman reports, have signed a Guild letter protesting such unauthorized use of their material. Some of the better-known scribes include Nora Roberts, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Michael Chabon, and Margaret Atwood.
The Authors Guild’s petition is not the only action being taken in the wake of AI. Other writers have filed class-action suits against AI companies, claiming their work is being pirated. AI is one of the main reasons for the Writers Guild of America’s strike (starting May 2nd), bringing American film and television production to a complete standstill. The New York Times summarizes the WGA’s position: “Writers are asking the studios for guardrails against being replaced by AI, having their work used to train AI or being hired to punch up AI-generated scripts at a fraction of their former pay rates.”
Award-winning writer/director Doug Burch describes the WGA strike as “vital to the future of those wanting basic living wages...It’s truly despicable when CEOs make $400 million a year and say that writers and actors are being unrealistic wanting to at least make a living wage.”
And just what is this average yearly salary? A forthcoming report from The Authors Guild asserts that the median income for a full-time writer was $23,000 in 2022. This after, a precipitous 42% decline in writers' incomes between 2009 and 2019.
History proves time and again that the haves never give anything to the have-nots without being forced to “share the wealth.” Whether it's coal mining, auto manufacturing, or movie-making, it’s taken the commitment of generations of die-hard activists to help address an economic imbalance.
The writers have one huge strength, something no boss or executive can do without – their talent, their craft, originality, passion, and their grit. As I understand it, AI can synthesize, imitate, mimic a writer’s work. The one thing it can’t do is create original thought and original material. Writers – with their unique perspectives and experiences, their individual and idiosyncratic use of language, and their ability to capture human behavior in all its grunge and glory – cannot be replaced.
Books, films, non-fiction, graphic novels, and poems are not merely material to be scraped, stolen, and exploited. They’re not “a data set to be ingested by an AI program”, they hold our past, our future, our quotidian lives, they teach us what it is to be human. This is a writer’s work.
The message is clear – Support the writers.
Happy Xmas (Strike Is Over)!
The AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA have reached an interim agreement. Here’s what that means for TV and movies
Christmas has arrived early! The SAG-AFTRA strike is finally over after 118 days — making it the longest actor’s strike in history. After a summer spent picketing and pleading with studios, actors are back to work as of 12:01 am Thursday, November 9th. Here’s what that means for them, for us, and for film and TV in general.
When did the actor's strike end?
After two weeks of arduous negotiating, SAG-AFTRA voted unanimously to approve the new deal laid out by the studios. Details are emerging slowly about the exact terms of the deal but the headline is this: it’s looking good for actors, and great for movie-goers.
The SAG-AFTRA statement read:
“In a contract valued at over one billion dollars, we have achieved a deal of extraordinary scope that includes "above-pattern" minimum compensation increases, unprecedented provisions for consent and compensation that will protect members from the threat of AI, and for the first time establishes a streaming participation bonus. Our Pension & Health caps have been substantially raised, which will bring much-needed value to our plans. In addition, the deal includes numerous improvements for multiple categories including outsize compensation increases for background performers, and critical contract provisions protecting diverse communities.”
Items on the original list of grievances included: the use of AI, actors' compensation and residuals, healthcare and other union benefits, and more. We can assume that most of these were addressed in the deal. Like the WGA strike of the summer, which lasted 143 days, actors can hope to see some fundamental changes in the business — hopefully for the better.
A parade of press tours
One thing we’ve missed during the strike? Press tours. Martin Scorcese - coming off a recent wave of TikTok fame thanks to his daughter - carried out a heroic press tour of one for Killer of the Flower Moon and the few films that received waivers had to feed our thirst for magazine interviews and red carpets. The cast of Priscilla and The Iron Claw … we thank you for your service.
But now, everyone is back to work. After saying no to events, awards, and press junkets, actors have to get back in front of the cameras and beg us to go watch their movies — balance is restored.
We can expect business as usual to return as soon as this Saturday when Timothee Chalamet is hosting SNL. While Dune: Part Two got pushed back, he still has Wonka to promote. Godspeed, Timmy.
Other films coming out soon might have to scramble to put together some sort of press. Titles we’re expecting by the end of the year include The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Trolls, Napoleon, Anyone But You, The Boys In The Boat, Saltburn, Eileen, Ferrari, The Color Purple, and more.
What movies and TV shows are filming now?
I’m sure many actors got calls summoning them back to the studio ASAP! Studios are prioritizing films with an original release date of early 2024, hoping to get them out in time. For example, It Ends With Us, the adaptation of the global Colleen Hoover hit is slated for February 2024. Can Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni pull it off? We’ll see.
Other high-priority films include a whole lotta sequels. Marvel Studios/Disney’s Deadpool 3 starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, directed by Shawn Levy was around half complete when the strike began. Paramount has been thinking about the Roman Empire as they anxiously await to finish Gladiator 2 over in Europe, while Warner Bros’ Tim Burton-directed Beetlejuice 2 just needs two days on set to wrap things up (allegedly). Clint Eastwood’s Juror No. 2 is another one hoping to wrap up soon with around a dozen days left. Then, there’s Sony’s Venom 3 for all the Spiderman/Tom Hardy lovers.
Needless to say, Hollywood’s gonna be busy.
What movies and TV shows will still be delayed?
Though the strike ending is great news for all, some films and TV shows have already been pushed back longer than we can take. Dune: Part Two won’t hit cinemas until March 2024, Zendaya’s Challengers with Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor won’t bless us until April 2026 and The White Lotus Season 3 won’t even be back until 2025. Other delays include Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven the Hunter and the next Spider-Verse movie. Stranger Things has even said they’ll have to use technology to make the actors look younger in the final season, which we likely won’t see until 2027. Wake me up when that’s finally out.
“Obviously, we’d like to try to preserve a summer of films,” Bob Iger of Disney told CNBC earlier in the negotiation cycle. “The entire industry is focused on that. We don’t have much time to do that.”
Despite the delays, what SAG-AFTRA leaves us with is hope. The statement said: “We have arrived at a contract that will enable SAG-AFTRA members from every category to build sustainable careers. Many thousands of performers now and into the future will benefit from this work.”
Solidarity with all workers!