andy-ttpd 🤍

devils that you know raise worse hell than a stranger

[chart data @chartdata]

Taylor Swift's "I Knew It, I Knew You" earns the biggest streaming debut for a soundtrack song in Spotify history.

[Apple Music @AppleMusic]

.@taylorswift13 did it again 🙌

[Spotify @Spotify]

On June 5th, 2026, Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” became the most-streamed country song in a single day by a female artist in Spotify history.

[chart data @chartdata]

Taylor Swift's "I Knew It, I Knew You" breaks the all-time record for biggest single day streams for a country song by a female artist in Spotify history.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

It was a Monday in early August 2023. The exhausted truck drivers of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour thought they were heading to a routine production meeting before the Los Angeles shows.
They had no idea what was coming.
Scott Swift walked in. Taylor's father didn't say much—he just began handing out envelopes. When the drivers finally peeked inside, some thought the check said $1,000. Others read $10,000. The third driver stared at his and said out loud: "This has to be a joke."
It wasn't.
$100,000.
Each driver. Nearly 50 of them. The industry standard bonus from the biggest stars? $5,000 to $10,000. Taylor had given them more than ten times that.
But here's what made it matter most: these drivers weren't wealthy. They lived in truck cabs. They hadn't seen their families in 24 weeks. They were people who would never own homes—until now. Until that envelope.
That moment of shock and tears? It was just the beginning.
Across the entire Eras Tour, Taylor quietly handed out $197 million in bonuses. The dancers. The band. The riggers. The lighting and sound technicians. The caterers. Every single person who built the show—they got bonuses, handwritten notes, and wax-sealed letters. When dancers opened theirs on camera in her docuseries, they broke down crying. Some couldn't believe she was real.
"If the tour grosses more, they get more," she explained simply. These people work hard. They deserve it.
But the crew bonuses weren't the only quiet revolution happening.
Starting in March 2023, in every city where the tour touched down, a call came to local food banks. Taylor wanted to donate. No press conference. No announcement. No photo op. One donation fed 75,000 meals. Another provided hundreds of thousands of pounds of fresh produce. Across the tour, the total reached millions of meals—possibly more—all delivered in silence.
She never posted about a single one.
And it wasn't new for her.
In March 2020, when the pandemic locked down the world, Taylor scrolled through social media posts from fans who were breaking. A photographer about to lose everything. A person staring down eviction. She sent direct messages with rent money—$3,000 here, $13,000 there. Some fans got enough for months of bills. She read the Washington Post. She noticed the names. She helped.
She never announced it.
Years later, in October 2025, a two-year-old named Lilah—fighting a cancer so rare that only 58 families in America had ever known it—was filmed by her mother dancing to a Taylor Swift song. Lilah called Taylor her friend. A few days later, the GoFundMe received a $100,000 donation.
The note said: "Sending the biggest hug to my friend, Lilah! Love, Taylor."
Mike Scherkenbach has worked with the wealthiest people in music. He's seen the bonuses. He's seen the behavior. He's watched billionaires guard their money jealously.
What he saw with Taylor was different.
The biggest tour in history grossed $2 billion. The artist behind it became a billionaire from her own songwriting. And then she signed her name onto hundreds of envelopes by hand and sent enough money back to the people who built her dream that they cried opening their letters.
That isn't strategy. That isn't a publicity stunt.
That's what happens when someone, somewhere along the way, remembered what matters.

[Pop Fusion HQ @PopFusionHQ]

Fans notice Billie Eilish’s documentary is being quietly screened in Israel.

It is worth noting that other artists received significant backlash for the same.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Universal Music is selling $1.4 billion in Spotify shares. It paid nothing for them. Spotify handed the shares over in 2008 just for letting Spotify play music, and the deal was set up so almost none of that money would ever reach the artists who made the music. Taylor Swift's 2018 contract changed that.

Back in 2008, Spotify was a small Swedish startup that needed songs to play. The big record labels had the songs. They had no reason to hand them over cheap, so the two sides cut a deal. Spotify gave them shares. The labels gave Spotify the right to play their music. Universal walked away with 5%. That stake later grew to 7% when Universal bought EMI and rolled EMI's 2% into its own. Then it drifted back to 3% as Spotify took on more investors and shrank everyone's slice. At today's prices, 3% of Spotify is worth about $2.7 billion. Universal sat on those shares for 18 years and never sold a single one. Until yesterday.

Most artists never see royalty money. When a label signs you, it pays you an advance to live on while you make the album. It also covers your studio time, your music videos, your marketing, your tour. All of those costs go on a tab. The label keeps every dollar your music earns until you clear that tab. Berklee, the music school in Boston, says as many as 96% of major-label artists never earn enough to clear it. They stay in the red their entire careers.

Sony moved first in 2018. It sold half its Spotify shares for $768 million and paid $250 million directly to its artists in cash, no matter how much each one still owed. Warner followed a few months later. It sold all of its Spotify shares for $504 million and said $126 million would go to its artists too. Warner played it differently. Most of that money went to pay down what those artists already owed, instead of putting fresh cash in their pockets.

Taylor Swift was negotiating her own deal with Universal that same year. She refused to sign unless Universal put the Sony version of the rule in her contract. Cash to artists, no matter what they owed. She wrote at the time that the clause "meant more to me than any other deal point." Universal had said publicly in March 2018 it would share Spotify money with artists. But it had not put the cash-not-credit rule in writing. Swift's contract, signed eight months later, did.

Universal is finally selling. Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash are about to land in artists' bank accounts, including artists who have spent years or decades in the red and would otherwise get nothing from a sale like this.

Most of those artists have never met Taylor Swift. All of them benefit from a single line she insisted on eight years ago.

[Taylor Swift @taylorswift13]

Talking about songwriting > Talking about anything else. Thank you @joecoscarelli and @nytmag. I had the (NY) Time of my life 😎

📷: Stefan Ruiz
🎥: Joshua Charow 

https://t.co/MRodcF5j1n

[Pop Base @PopBase]

Director David Lowery reveals that Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ Tour inspired Anne Hathaway’s concert scenes in A24’s ‘MOTHER MARY’:

“Her Reputation concert film is one of the best concert films ever. It's truly phenomenal. And for our concert sequences we looked at that repeatedly. You would not believe the amount of time we were talking about Taylor. […] We were literally using Reputation as a guide. I can go on about Reputation all day.”

(https://t.co/bSIr8eezrM)

[billboard charts @billboardcharts]

.@taylorswift13's 'The Tortured Poets Department' has now spent 100 total weeks on the #Billboard200 (No. 32 this week).

It's her 14th album to reach the milestone.

[chart data @chartdata]

Billboard Hot 100: #7(+3) Opalite, Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) [24 weeks]. *peak: #1*

[Touring Data @touringdata]

Top Tours by Solo Artists:

Revenue; Artist; Tour; Shows
$2.078B; #TaylorSwift; Eras; 149
$939.1M; #EltonJohn; Farewell Yellow Brick Road; 329
$875.7M; #EdSheeran; Mathematics; 188
$775.6M; #EdSheeran; Divide; 255
$729.7M; #BruceSpringsteen; 2023-2025 Tour; 129
$692.6M; #TheWeeknd; After Hours til Dawn; 110/158
$617.3M; #HarryStyles; Love On Tour; 169
$584.7M; #Pink; Summer Carnival; 94
$579.8M; #Beyonce; Renaissance; 56
$458.6M; #RogerWaters; The Wall; 219

[Rolling Stone @RollingStone]

Vince Gill said he is all for Taylor Swift being inducted into the Country Hall of Fame one day.

“A lot of people don’t realize she’s arguably the biggest donor that’s ever been to the Country Music Hall of Fame. I’m crazy about her. I fully support that.”
https://t.co/OLpOrHRJmH

[Taylor Nation @taylornation13]

3 years ago today, our eras era began #TSTheErasTour 💚💛💜♥️🩵🖤🩷🩶🤎💙🤍

[Variety @Variety]

Led by Taylor Swift, U.S. Vinyl Sales Reached $1 Billion for First Time Since 1983 as Recorded Music Revenue Hit New High in 2025 https://t.co/BCjKi69Ori

[Variety @Variety]

The U.S. recorded-music industry reached a record high of $11.5 billion in revenue in 2025.

Premium paid streaming subscription revenues grew 6.8% to $5.88 billion and vinyl sales, led by Taylor Swift, were up for a 19th consecutive year, passing $1 billion in sales for the first time since 1983.
https://t.co/CQCfipmIT1

[chart data @chartdata]

Billboard Hot 100: #1(+7) Opalite, Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) [20 weeks]. *new peak*

[IFPI @IFPI_org]

#1 @taylorswift13 🏆 – The Life of a Showgirl

For her second IFPI Global Charts #1 slot this year, it’s IFPI Global Artist of the Year Taylor Swift with "The Life of a Showgirl." Officially this year’s biggest global album!

Congratulations! 👏

#GlobalAlbumChart
@taylornation13

[chart data @chartdata]

Taylor Swift holds the top 4 biggest global streaming weeks for any artist in history (via Billboard).

[chart data @chartdata]

Taylor Swift becomes the first artist in history to be named IFPI's best selling artist of the year worldwide on six occasions (2014, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 & 2025).