Taylor Swift has been all over the news the past few months, so it seemed only appropriate that Matt and Jadrian dedicate an entire episode to the pop star. The idea for this episode was sparked after a recent news article about it being cheaper to travel to Argentina to see Taylor Swift than to see her domestically in the United States. We tried to keep our discussion focused on her tour, but we may have let ourselves wander in a few places.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why is it cheaper to fly to another country AND buy a Taylor Swift ticket than to buy a ticket domestically?
Is Taylor Swift costing herself money by undercharging fans?
A couple of Taylor Swift songs that have economic lessons in them
And much more!
Catch up on sold old episodes:
You can also listen to us on Google Podcasts, TuneIn Radio, and Apple Podcasts. If one of these is your go-to podcast service, be sure to rate us and subscribe!
Some show notes:
Jadrian has a new pint glass and a new drink. Since it was the middle of summer, he went with Del's Shandy by Narragansett Brewing Company. Matt went with a growler pour from his favorite local tap house: a Both Coast IPA - Marzoni's.
We started the episode by highlighting Swift’s popularity as the second most streamed artist on Spotify in 2022. Bad Bunny has been the top artist for a few years in a row, but it was only a couple of years ago that Taylor Swift wasn’t in the Top 5. Her recent concert tour has really shot her up the rankings.
So why aren’t people going to Argentina to see the concert if they can get a concert and a trip to Argentina? Perhaps transaction costs are keeping people from going down there. Not only do you and your friends need to have enough days off to go down, but you also need someone who speaks some Spanish, and you need a passport. A little less than half of the country even has a passport:
We then jumped into a conversation about how much tickets are costing for the Swift concern in Pittsburgh and how secondary markets like StubHub and Ticketmaster can get away with charging fees as high as they do. The cheapest tickets were going for around $1,000 each, but that’s not how much she earned off the ticket. She likely only earns a few hundred dollars for the original sales price. Does that mean Taylor Swift is underpaid? In between the time we recorded and then published this episode, noble laureate Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed claiming as much.
So why are Ticketmaster and other secondary sellers able to get away with this? Market power might help explain some of it:
Another cool thing that happened between the time we chatted and the time we hit publish was an update that Ticketmaster would start showing an “all-in” price on their site in an effort to fight back against potential Congressional legislation against “junk fees.” We ended the episode with a nice chat about how confusing it is that there seem to really just be two major companies charging really high fees for their service, and no competitor has really come in to drive those fees down.
Our research spin focused on Alan Krueger’s book, Rockonomics, which looks at the economics of the music industry. In one chapter, Krueger highlights a 2013 paper by Fernando Ferreira and Joel Waldfogel that looks at how technology has impacted the trade of popular culture.
This week’s pop culture references:
The pop culture options were easy this time since the whole episode was around a pop culture icon. It turns out that we both went with songs from her 1989 album. Matt with Blank Space since it has a cool explanation of tradeoffs and probabilistic thinking:
Jadrian went with an easy one to highlight an economic concept: Shake it Off. It’s an easy application of sunk cost decision-making and how people shouldn’t pay attention to sunk costs. When you can’t get your money or time back, you should shake it off:
Share this post