Taylor Swift Is Already a Billionaire, But She’s Also a Special Other Kind of Billionaire

At this point, Taylor Swift has pretty much made a hobby out of smashing records. Most Album of the Year Grammy wins in history? She did that. Youngest artist to write and perform a No. 1 song on the Hot Country Songs chart? Hello to 17-year-old Swift, strumming along to “Our Song.” First artist to occupy all 10 top slots on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart at the same time? Meet us at Midnights. The list goes on.

Now, according to the Forbes World’s Celebrity Billionaires 2024 list, she can add another item to her already impressive array of fun facts: Swift is the first person to qualify for billionaire status based solely off of earnings related to her songwriting and performances. She hit the monetary milestone back in October 2023, thanks to the massive success of her Eras Tour, but her $1.1 billion estimated net worth can only have grown since then. After all, the analysis in October was before the on-demand home release of her concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, and only a nose into its wildly successful theatrical run, a deal that Swift’s business arm brokered independently with theaters instead of through a distributor, leading to vaster profits for Swift. That’s not even to mention the reported $75 million Disney later paid for the film’s streaming rights.

And then there’s the Eras Tour itself, which is currently on a brief hiatus of its global leg, having already looped South America, Australia, and Asia. The European portion of the tour resumes in May, as will the proceeds from ticket sales, merch, and more.

But wait, there’s more! In just over two weeks on April 19, Swift’s newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, hits shelves. Swift’s online store has already posted several limited edition variants of the album for preorder (ask Billie Eilish how she feels about that), and it feels not unlikely that fans will be interested in scooping up Swift’s latest.

Swift isn’t the only billionaire artist on Forbes’ list—fellow artist Rihanna has a reported $1.4 billion net worth—but she’s distinguished by earning her slot through her music, not a product line, like Rihanna’s Fenty makeup line or Savage clothing spinoff and others.