Taylor Swift has officially reached billionaire status – 17 years into her career as music’s biggest superstar, it was reported on Thursday. 

The Look What You Made Me Do singer, 33, has proven that her song lyrics hold some weight, as Bloomberg reported that Swift, 33, is now a part of the coveted ten-digit club, with a net worth of $1.1 billion. 

The success of the multi-Grammy Award-winning songwriter’s Eras Tour – which is on track to becoming the highest grossing tour in history – is credited for skyrocketing her net worth.

The accomplishment is particularly monumental as she is among a small few who’ve achieved the milestone ‘through music and performing alone.’

But, is it just the success of her music alone that has cemented Taylor’s ten-figure net worth, or the culmination of over a decade of business know-how?

Original album sales

Swift primarily earned her millions from a successful music career, which she began at age 16 with her eponymous debut album.

Since then, her 10 studio albums have sold millions of copies both physical and digital.

In 2020, her albums Evermore and Folklore made up the bulk of her $23.8 million revenue, with Billboard calculating that the singer took home 46% of the royalties from sales and streaming, since she owned the masters.

The publishing rights that Swift owns for her previous albums are worth an estimated $200 million, according to Forbes.

Taylor’s latest album, Midnights, sold 6 million album equivalent units worldwide in the first two months of its release – making Swift the only artist to have five albums with more than 1 million units sold during release week, Universal Music Group say.

Re-recording sales boom

The Lover hitmaker has been busy re-recording her first six albums after a dispute with her old label Big Machine Records.

She has so far released re-recording of Fearless (2008), Red (2012), Speak Now (2010 and now her beloved 2014 album titled 1989, which dropped on Thursday night, which has sent fans into a frenzy. 

Back in 2019 Taylor took to her Tumblr to reveal ‘bully’ Scooter Braun — who is the manager of Justin Bieber and former manager of Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato — acquired the label she was previously at Big Machine Records.

His company Ithaca Holdings LLC bought Big Machine Label Group for a reported $300 million. The deal included the master recordings of all six of her albums – all of her previous music and her legacy.

On her Tumblr post, Taylor slammed Scooter as well as Big Machine Label Group CEO Scott Borchetta and revealed she was not offered the opportunity to buy her own masters and that the former bullied her for years.

Braun then sold Swift’s masters to the private equity firm Shamrock Holdings in 2020 for a reported $300 million.

An angry Swift took to Twitter at the time to react to the ‘second time my music had been sold without my knowledge.’

She claimed to have received a letter from the firm that claimed ‘Scooter Braun had required that they make no contact with me or my team, or the deal would be off.’

Taylor also claimed that ‘Scooter Braun ‘will continue to profit off my old musical catalog for many years’ as part of the business deal.

Shamrock Holdings has since sold a minority stake to RidgeLake Partners.

Music stream royalties 

Taylor is believed to be raking in £6.7million in streaming royalties every month after re-recording some of her earlier albums.

The Shake It Off singer is said to have already earned more than £5,000,000 in estimated royalties following the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) in June.

According to the latest reports, her re-recorded albums have a combined streaming total of 6,872,886,786.

The singer-songwriter, who has the most Billboard Hot 100 entries out of any female artist in the world, earns an estimated £6,738,785 a month in royalties solely from her three re-recorded albums.

Sell-out concerts and tours

Bloomberg reported that the 53 concerts Swift performed in the United States this year ‘added $4.3 billion to the country’s gross domestic product.’

This is because the massive tour led to extensive travel, ticket sales and merchandising opportunities for her legions of fans.

The outlet notes their analysis was a ‘conservative’ one as it is strictly based on figures that are publicly known such as her real estate portfolio, streaming deals, etc.

Swift kicked off her Eras Tour in the United States in March following a now infamous Ticketmaster debacle last November that left many ‘Swifties’ without tickets and, instead, saw them snapped up by resellers.

The site had crashed and fans found themselves booted from the virtual queues.

Swift spoke out amid the chaos, telling her devout fanbase that she was just as ‘pissed off’ as everyone else is.

At face value, the ticket prices ranged between $49 to $499 – but, on resale sites like StubHub and SeatGeek, they were going for thousands of dollars.

SeatGeek told U.S. News in August that the average price of an Eras Tour resale ticket was $1,619.

The tour is predicted to net the star a staggering $4.1 billion – the most an artist has ever made from a single tour in history – according to the Washington Post.

Blockbuster Eras Tour film

Taylor’s already massive paycheck is also set to expand as the Eras Tour film hit theaters on October 13 after raking in over $80 million in advanced sales alone.

As of now, it has grossed a whopping $130million worldwide.

It was filmed during one of the six of her sold-out Eras Tour shows at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles in August.

The film was a major coup for AMC. Taylor made the unusual move of negotiating directly with the theater chain to have it serve as her film’s distributor — skipping the usual middle man — after she and her family became frustrated with the demands of distributors she had been working with.

AMC has also been working out contracts with rival theater chains to allow them to show the film as well.

The movie also isn’t eligible for AMC’s A-list subscription plan, and the tickets are more expensive than usual, meaning that the theater chain — and Taylor — will be making an even bigger pile of cash than usual.

Sprawling property empire 

Swift also has a real estate portfolio worth more than $150 million, including luxurious beachfront mansions and property worth $45 million in Tribeca, New York City, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Among her properties, Swift owns several units in a luxury-condo building in Nashville, Tennessee. She first purchased a penthouse at the Adelicia building when she was 19 years old for $1.99 million.

The Bad Blood singer also owns an estate in Forest Hills, Tennessee – worth an estimated $8 million.

In Watch Hill, Rhode Island, Taylor also owns a seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom beachfront property, which she reportedly bought through an LLC for about $17.75 million in 2013.

The nearly 12,000 square-foot home is now valued at about $30 million.

In 2015, the pop megastar purchased the historic Goldwyn Mansion in Beverly Hills, California for $25 million.

The estate was built by Samuel Goldwyn, a Hollywood producer who was part of the famous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio.

Swift restored the 1930s mansion to its former glory, and was granted permission to have the home pipped as a historic landmark.

Lucrative endorsement deals 

According to Investopedia, Taylor has entered into partnerships throughout her career with major brands, such as; Coca-Cola, CoverGirl, Keds, AT&T, Target, and Sony Electronics.

Swift has appeared in many advertising campaigns for the brands across print, television, and digital platforms.

Finance-savvy father 

Taylor’s financial success could also be attributed to the direct influence from her father, Scott Swift.

Scott is a longtime Merrill Lynch (a Bank of America company) employee whose registered investment adviser The Swift Group is based in the family’s hometown of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.

A disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists him as linked to 10 companies affiliated with his daughter, according to Bloomberg.

This includes merchandising and rights-management businesses and entities that own her tour bus, two private jets and real estate.