“I appreciate [you saying love looks good on me], thank you very much. [At this stage of my life, a camera on my would show] a lot of happiness, hard work, being able to persevere through some ups and downs, some new challenges in life, and just still having that love for life throughout the journey. […] I’m very aware [of the impact I’ve had on women in sports this year], and obviously this is mostly because Taylor’s in my life right now. And we got her a part of Chiefs Kingdom, and sure enough, that brought an entire entourage of human beings that love to support her and love to support everything that she’s about, so it’s been a fun ride, it has been beautiful to see the father and daughter stories that have come about because of all this. […] The biggest thing for me is that perception that we just talked about. I never want the people in the building to ever have the idea that I’m not focused on the game, I’m not focused on being my best at football, not having all my attention to my craft and making sure I’m accountable for the biggest game of our lives. So with that being said, I do have a guarded approach to it, but at the same time, I know what me and Taylor have is special, so I get it.”
— Travis Kelce on perception and finding balance this season in a Pre-Super Bowl VIII interview (x)
Billboard’s Power 100 list, its annual ranking of the music industry’s top executives, is here. See where Taylor Swift ranks on the Billboar
01 - Taylor Swift
No one in the music industry wielded more power over the past year than Taylor Swift, who made history at stadiums, movie theaters and on the Billboard charts, leaving even the most seasoned executives speechless. While they’d long celebrated her staggering popularity as a singer, songwriter and performer, her force as a strategic business leader suddenly came into sharper focus — and industry veterans took notes as they watched some of her bravest and most innovative business risks reap remarkable rewards.
At 34, she is one of the music industry’s most charismatic and influential leaders — and she rewrites the rules.
“The piece of advice I would give to the other executives on this list is that the best ideas are usually ones without industry precedent,” Swift tells Billboard. “The biggest crossroads moments of my career came down to sticking to my instincts when my ideas were looked at with skepticism. When someone says to me, ‘But that has never been done successfully before,’ it fires me up. We have to take strategic risks every day in this industry, but every once in a while, you have to really trust your gut and take a flying leap. My rerecordings are my favorite example of this, and I’m extremely grateful to my team and fans for taking that leap with me because it absolutely changed my life.”
Sage advice for an industry in which instinct has largely been supplanted by metrics and data analysis.
In December, Time named Swift its 2023 Person of the Year. In September, after encouraging her 279 million Instagram followers to vote and linking to vote.org, the nonpartisan nonprofit said it received over 35,000 registrations. She appears on the cover of this issue of Billboard and in the No. 1 spot of our annual Power 100 issue because her force across the business of music is now unparalleled — and because she models commitment to innovation that the rest of the business will need in order to tackle the big challenges ahead.
Swift’s gambles have paid off handsomely over the past year.
Her massive The Eras stadium tour, which began in March after she controversially put all the tickets on sale at once, crashing Ticketmaster and sparking mass hysteria, grossed an estimated $906.1 million in 2023 and is poised to become the highest-grossing global tour of all time before it wraps in December, according to Billboard.
The Golden Globe-nominated Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, taped during her six-show run at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., in August, has grossed over $261.6 million worldwide since its October opening, according to AMC Theatres Entertainment. In January, the publicly traded movie-house chain announced that the film’s box-office take made it the highest-grossing concert/documentary picture ever released, surpassing Michael Jackson’s 2009 This Is It. Once again blazing a new path, Swift made a groundbreaking distribution deal directly with AMC Theaters instead of linking with a film studio.
Swift has shaken up the catalog market, too. When Scooter Braun infuriated her by acquiring the master recordings of her first six albums through his Ithaca Holdings and then sold them to investment firm Shamrock Capital at a profit, Swift rerecorded the albums with loving precision and added bonus tracks to the new releases. They performed phenomenally well, as she deftly used her tour to promote them. When her latest rerecording (and 14th studio album overall), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), spent its fifth week at atop the Billboard 200 at the end of 2023, Swift beat Elvis Presley’s record for the most weeks at No. 1 by a solo artist. Her industry market share last year was 1.72%. If she were her own genre, she’d rank ninth for 2023 — bigger than jazz.
“She’s the smartest artist I’ve ever worked with,” says Messina Touring Group’s Louis Messina, who promotes Swift’s tours and has worked with her since 2005. “She outworks everybody and she has always had this vision. If you’re around her, you can’t help but believe in her.” —Melinda Newman
"We're just two people in a relationship supporting each other and having fun with it, man. It's nothing more than that. And how much the world wants to paint the picture, and make us the enemy, we just have fun with it, and enjoy every single bit of it. And sure enough, I love it when Taylor comes and supports me, and enjoys the game with the fam and friends. It's been nothing but just a wonderful year."
— Travis Kelce on the Pat McAfee show on the noise surrounding his relationship with Taylor (x)
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