The Taylor Swift Factor

I'd call most of that the Bonamassa Factor.

He's got quite the social media presence.
His site merchandises the hell out of his stuff. He's got physical product.

He just needs to work on his appeal to 12-year old girls....and not in a creepy way.
 
Good read. They did a piece on her on NPR a few weeks ago and talked about a lot of the same things. She does all the right stuff to market herself and to appeal to her fans at the grassroots level. In fact I know for a fact that it works because that is a lot of why she is #1 daughter's favorite artists right now.
 
just because.

Taylor-Swift-2013.jpg
 
dodgechargerfan said:
I'd call most of that the Bonamassa Factor.

He's got quite the social media presence.
His site merchandises the hell out of his stuff. He's got physical product.

He just needs to work on his appeal to 12-year old girls....and not in a creepy way.
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Exactly!

It is the science that many musicians did not learn while learning to play music. The undiscovered as so to speak.

Denverdave said:
Good read. They did a piece on her on NPR a few weeks ago and talked about a lot of the same things. She does all the right stuff to market herself and to appeal to her fans at the grassroots level. In fact I know for a fact that it works because that is a lot of why she is #1 daughter's favorite artists right now.
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Yup and when I read it, it makes sense. Imagine all of the band who failed because when they were done with the gig, they did nothing to interact with the audience. Granted I am still learning to do this.
 
To be fair, country artists have always been better about this than any other music genre. Also, they never stopped the old school methods of finding faces/voices and putting them together with the best songs and producers and musicians (studio and live). As much as Taylor gets her own writing credits she also has a lot of collaborations. It's also likely that she's only just starting to make her own decisions, but not these ones. She's got an excellent marketing machine supporting her, one that is setting her cues...not looking to her for advice on how to reach the audience. It's just that her team is listening to their tech-savvy members (presumably younger "hipper" folks) that have the foresight to see how modern social media and apps can be used to maximize exposure.

There's definitely a formula to it, but, as has happened during the history of popular music, it really has be the perfect artist/band at the perfect time or EVERYONE would be famous. I still wish it were happening to a far better artist. There are quite a few beautiful young women that can actually sing wonderfully, write infinitely better music, and are also stellar instrumentalists. SHEL is four sisters of amazing talent that write and play excellent music. Larkin Poe are two sisters that are on a similar level, but are growing towards a broader rock and pop sound after starting in bluegrass (while never being modern country). St. Vincent is endlessly better than Swift on every level for me, but she's got a vision for the art she wants to produce and isn't likely to veer towards various genres,

For me the biggest difference (the reason she's everywhere and my examples and others are unknown in comparison) is that Taylor is far more vanilla...bland. She's goes easier to listen to for the average passive music fan, the people that actually are hurtling her album toward multi-platinum by year's end. The same people that are getting sucked into buying her other albums since her people realized that having stream for free on Spotify would negatively affect the facade that is album sales figures. Yet at her level she should be making some decent/serious money off of sales.
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
SHEL is four sisters of amazing talent that write and play excellent music.
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I have been a fan of SHEL for about 6 years now. I used to chat with Eva on MySpace back when it was relevant and they were trying to build their local fan base. Which they did pretty well.
 
Denverdave said:
I have been a fan of SHEL for about 6 years now. I used to chat with Eva on MySpace back when it was relevant and they were trying to build their local fan base. Which they did pretty well.
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My fanship is far more recent, but once I made it to the chorus of Freckles I was sold. The album and the EP do not disappoint. I even bought Hannah's piano album. I keep checking for a new album...could you check on and encourage that? :thu:
 
Dogsinotpalc said:
My fanship is far more recent, but once I made it to the chorus of Freckles I was sold. The album and the EP do not disappoint. I even bought Hannah's piano album. I keep checking for a new album...could you check on and encourage that? :thu:
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I know they have about four new songs in the can and have been writing in the past month in their adopted home base in Nashville. They did release a single in that Nicholas Sparks movie that just came out. I got to hear a couple of the new tunes this past summer when they played in Denver.
 
They forgot to add in having a record label willing to front the fees for a legion of uncredited songwriters on the early album, and Max Martin when she’d sold enough that they knew paying him would be worth the money.
 
Kerouac said:
Fuck Taylor Swift and her music.
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Dispite how people feel about Taylor Swift, she is just the vehicle for the 'Marketing' which many artists fail at - besides you already knew that. However the purpose for the thread is how the musician can get closer to their fans or future fanbase.

jp_nyc said:
They forgot to add in having a record label willing to front the fees for a legion of uncredited songwriters on the early album, and Max Martin when she’d sold enough that they knew paying him would be worth the money.
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While she is now part of the machine, artists on the local level can still use the concepts to market themselves. We so often hear arguments about the band who is going to play a gig somewhere and don't promote. Then the venue points a finger at the band for not promoting and the band points to the venue for not promoting. Well someone has to take some responsibility and the one that the band can control is themselves. So why not promote? If the venue doesn't after the gig is played, don't play there anymore.
 
Modern Saint said:
Dispite how people feel about Taylor Swift, she is just the vehicle for the 'Marketing' which many artists fail at - besides you already knew that. However the purpose for the thread is how the musician can get closer to their fans or future fanbase.
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We market ourselves as not sounding like Taylor-fucking-Swift.
 
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