Taylor Swift - Music Marketing

Taylor Swift is one of the most influential and successful artists in modern music history. She is known for her experimental approach to her music, expanding across a range of diverse genres over the years. She is also known for her powerful songwriting and her cultural impact, she is a global icon.  

She originally signed with Big Machine Records with who she released her self-titled debut album in 2006. Her album was country-pop with relatable lyrics about teenage love, heartbreak, and growing up. 

Her early albums like Fearless and speak Now embodied country and pop melodies. The hit songs Love Story and You Belong With Me made her a global sensation. Her album Reputation tackled fame, media scrutiny, and personal conflict with a darker, edgier pop sound. Her songwriting is often deeply personal and honest. She’s a master of narrative, turning relationships, heartbreak, growth, and fame into poetry. Her eras, lyrics, and aesthetics influence fashion, social media, and fan culture. She has sold over 100 million albums worldwide, won 14 Grammy Awards, 3 for album of the year, and was named Artist of the Decade (AMAs) and Woman of the Decade (Billboard). 

Text 1, Bad Blood Music Video 

This music video was iconic for its time. It included some incredibly famous people like Zendaya, Gigi Hadid, Hayley Williams and many more whilst of course featuring Kendrick Lamar who had a rap verse in the song. The music video inhabited aspects of performance as well as lip syncing. Taylor is represented as a leader in this music video with the iconic shot of her and the other characters walking away from an explosion which is an iconic convention of action films to show a power move.   

The video also has narrative, showing us them training. The whole video is almost a montage of people training before the big battle at the end that only has around 30 seconds of screen time. The video emits power and adds to her independent and strong artist persona. It also uses a lot of CGI and special fx which immediately informs us on the budget that went towards this music video. Since it was a high budget music video, it further adds to her reputation as a successful artist.  

The song itself is incredibly powerful so having a visual representation of t being equally/ more powerful is so relevant. This music video is fast-paced and the mise-en-scene feels straight out of an action/ superhero film. It has all of the conventions of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film; the outfits, fictional weapons/ powers and CGI create a shared conceptual roadmap of the superhero genre.  

Text 2, Taylor Swift’s Website 

Her home page instantly throws her new album ‘THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT’ at us. 90% of the front page is the album cover for that album. It also includes promotion for her merchandise store with a short video displaying people happily hanging out, wearing her merch. The home page has a menu that includes: Shop, My Letter, Archive, Directed Projects, Sign Up. Not many artist websites allow fans to actually interact on the site, so the ‘sign up’ option is very rare and indicates that there are opportunities for fans to post/ interact on this website. It is also a signifier that this is a well-developed and high budget website. 

The home page also has mini-introductions to the other pages that are available. It shows around 4-5 things that will be mentioned/ featured on that page, with a link to the page following so that fans can easily access that page without scrolling back to the menu.  

This page shows how Taylor has officially bought back all of her music that was unfortunately (out of her hands) sold to another label. This has been a fight with the industry that Taylor has been fighting for possibly a decade. The fact she has dedicated a whole page to this shows us even more how much this moment means to her. The title being ‘My Letter’ indicated intimacy and personalisation – as if this was handwritten by her. The format of the page is literally a letter which increases the connection with fans within this page. This is unique to her website as it is a personal battle she has been fighting and has finally won.