Taylor Swift’s Latest Announcement Proves Her Genius Yet Again

Taylor Swift’s legendary Eras tour is finally ending, after more than a year and a half. She’ll give her final Eras performance December 8 in Vancouver, B.C. But Swift, the newest pop star billionaire and one of the smartest marketers on earth, announced one more offering for her fans this week.

She’s launching a new book, The Official Eras Tour Book commemorating the tour with her thoughts and recollections, as well as many photographs. The book goes on sale at Target on Black Friday, November 29.

The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology will go on sale on vinyl and CD that same day. Up till now, the album plus bonus tracks that make up the Anthology have only been available to stream.

It’s a brilliant, brilliant move. Like everything Swift does, it’s thoroughly thought through, perfectly timed, and designed to give her fans exactly what they want.

And it’s something you should probably consider doing to celebrate your own company’s milestone or project.

Taylor Swift is likely the most hard-working and prolific pop star in history. In the middle of the grueling Eras tour, she managed to record and release The Tortured Poets Department, and then the bonus Anthology tracks that turned it into a double album.

Not only that, at the same time, she also continued her project to re-record her first six albums in “Taylor’s Version”, after she lost ownership of their master recordings.

With her usual impeccable timing, she released the Taylor’s Version of 1989, her most popular album before TTPD (as The Tortured Poets Department is affectionately known) in the middle of the Eras Tour.

Obviously, Swift loves to write songs, to work hard, and to express herself. So it’s a bit surprising that, unlike many other celebrities, she has never published a book.

Especially since many books (and one college course) have been written about her. Now that she is coming out with a book, it’s not the usual celebrity autobiography. Instead of chronicling her life from childhood on and relating the triumphs and disappointments of her career thus far, it focuses only on the Eras tour.

According to Swift’s Instagram announcement, there are more than 500 photos from the tour in The Official Eras Tour Book, many of them never published before. Indeed, if the animation of flipping its pages is an accurate representation, this book contains a lot more photos than it does text.

Consider for a moment how smart all of this is. If Swift wants to publish another book in the future, she won’t have to worry about having already told all the good stories because this book is only about her current tour.

Future tours could inspire future books with no concern about duplication. Filling the book with her own reflections about the tour, as she describes it, makes it much easier to write than if she had to follow a narrative structure.

At the same time, she’s giving fans precisely what they crave, an intimate look into her thoughts and feelings, and something they can pick up and leaf through for years to come if they want to relive their Eras tour memories.

It’s an incredibly clever idea, even if Swift isn’t the only one to have it. A few days ago, the Icelandic pop icon Bjork also announced that a book commemorating her five-year Cornucopia tour would come out on November 15.

Which was conceived first, The Official Eras Tour Book or Cornucopia? It’s difficult to know and it doesn’t really matter. A good idea is a good idea, whoever had it first. In fact, it’s an idea that any business leader or entrepreneur could consider copying.

Did your company started out as an idle conversation between friends, that has now grown into a real business with employees and products on the market? If so, a book that takes readers from those early days to your present success might appeal to employees, investors, customers, and other constituents.

Or, if you’ve launched a new product and it’s gone on to make an impact in the marketplace, a book relating how that product was created might be a great way to celebrate that journey. Your customers and fans might love it too.

Whether it’s filled with images or just words, and whether you publish it yourself or sell it to a traditional publishing house, coming out with a book is a powerful way to establish yourself as a thought leader.

It lets people into your thought process, and can deepen your connection with anyone who cares about your company.

Publishing my book, Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work (New World Library, 2022), brought me many speaking engagements and podcast appearances, and other professional opportunities.

It also gave me a chance to dig deep into the question of how to fulfill your own needs and happiness at the same time as work that you love, and find some powerful ways to make that balance work. What could publishing a book do for you?

Taylor Swift’s shows are nothing if not waves-creating events. From top-grossing albums to record-shattering tours, or occasional subtle social media maneuvers, she has time and again proven not only her talent but the instincts of a sharp tactician who stayed at the top of the music industry for over a decade.

It’s the Taylor Swift who, through this latest pronouncement, continues to demonstrate that she is the master who blends creativity, smart business, and fan engagement into a rather perfect success formula.

Let’s get into what the specifics of the announcement are and why it’s sheer genius. For any news from Taylor Swift, the world waits with bated breath-but when it came, it was monumentally waiting in the wings.

She revealed that she would be releasing 1989 (Taylor’s Version), a re-recording of her blockbuster 2014 album 1989, marking one of the latest milestones in her quest for reclaiming control over her master recordings.

The implications are far greater, steered towards a far broader strategy that heralds Swift’s innovative vision into the music industry, and ripples are causing waves in the entertainment circle. On the face of it, this could simply be seen as another album coming on to the market.

It’s useful to take a step back in order to appreciate why this announcement is seismic-to look back on Swift’s ongoing battle for ownership of her music. In 2019, Swift sold the rights to the original masters of her music to a private equity firm over Swift’s objection.

Meaning Swift no longer owned the rights to some of her earliest work. Rather than yielding, Swift took action: she announced she would re-record her first six albums so she could retake control over the music from her past.

Since this announcement, she has put out Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) with huge success.

Perhaps 1989 is one of her strongest LPs because there she officially and firmly transitioned into being a full-fledged pop artist and established herself as a global superstar.

She is not just taking back what’s rightfully hers, but also inviting listeners to relive one of the eras that’ll be remembered as one of Swift’s greatest.

That way, any profits afterward will go straight to the right pocket-not to that private equity company holding her original masters.

Here is the brilliance of Swift, where she takes a private fight and makes it public. She managed to make reclaiming her work a cultural event for her followers; they aren’t just aware of it, they are all participating.

Expectation of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) can’t be denied, and seems to prove just how deeply well connected Swift actually is to her fanbase. Swift will let the world know about her new album when it’s just the perfect time.

In one way or another, she dominated most of last year and this with her Eras Tour, a concert trilogy that stretches from starting out to mastery. It has already drawn in millions of fans around the world, as well as generated hundreds of millions of dollars.

Announcing 1989 in the middle of this tour also makes Swift perfectly align with her past and what she has accomplished thus far with her present, music. She’s reminding fans of the music that made her a pop icon while they’re already engaged in celebrating her legacy.

This strategic timing ensures the excitement she generates from her tour remains alive while she increases her profiles, even when the tour is approaching its end. Swift is one of the masters in controlling the narrative, and this statement ensures that she will hog all airwaves and twitters for months ahead.

So, if talking about the career of Taylor Swift in general and comparing it with other musicians, it can be characterized with one of the deepest and most meaningful links to the fans: “Swifts” – always informed by the musician, who tends to drop Easter eggs and hidden messages throughout her work in an effort to make her fans active participants in her journey.

So the news wasn’t different. Swift had already teased faint glimpses of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on her social media posts and during her tour performances before finally announcing it to the world.

But Swift knows that her fans don’t just play her songs-they are emotionally wrapped up in them. By unleashing 1989 now, she is doing more than letting them relive some of their favorite memories with the songs, but rather giving them strength and ownership in her very real, very personal, drastically artistic interpretations of possession.

The connection makes every release a global event, with fans gathering around Swift’s message as if it were their own.

Besides her remarkable creativity, Swift has also proven herself to be a shrewd businesswoman. Re-recording her albums and recovering her rights over her music composition is the smartest financial decision.

She earns from the new versions while the original masters become less profitable for the company that owns them.

That is what Swift has done by releasing 1989 (Taylor’s Version) at a time when the demand for her music from her fans was higher than ever.

This will ensure that the new versions of her songs will perform better than the initial versions, thereby digging her legacy deeper into public consciousness.

Conclusion: A Strategic and Emotional Masterpiece
Not only a new album, but the new Taylor Swift news represents a fantastic entrepreneurial masterclass in owning the artistic space, engaging with fans, and getting ahead in business.

Re-recording 1989 is really about taking back her narrative and giving her fans the meaningful stake in her interests that they deserve. The timing, the messaging, and the execution all point to one inescapable fact: Taylor Swift is a genius.

With 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on the horizon, she is clearly far from even being near the end of making history. Breaking barriers and redefining what an artist means in this new music industry, Swift’s legacy grows with every step she takes.