Why ‘The Life of A Showgirl’ by Taylor Swift avoids rates

On Friday, Tayra McDaniels, 24, will pass through the stairs of his East Village apartment building and collect four preordination vinyl editions of the new Taylor Swift album, “The Life of a Showgirl”, each of a different color and with a different collectible cover. Then she will go to Aim Find out three more exclusive CDs and another vinyl, he said.

The tour will cost you more than $ 200. “I know it’s a lot of money,” he said. “But I don’t want to lose myself.”

A postponement point in the price: McDaniels and other vinyl fans will not have to worry about tariffs in their sets.

Vinyl, CD records and cassettes were saved from the reversal of the Trump administration administration of the exemption of “Minimis”. The exemption, which had allowed the packages valued in less than $ 800 imported without rates, was designed to simplify customs for low -cost imports and reduce rates for consumers and small retailers. Trump’s reversal of the exemption allowed tariffs to enter into such shipments, but not in physical music.

A perhaps of the Cold War Age known as the Berman amendment to the International Law of Emergency Economic Powers prevents the presidents from regulating the flow of “informative materials”, a category that includes physical music, books and works of art.

“If Vinyl had undergone a rate, I could have seen the price of a record of up to $ 40 and $ 50,” said Berklee College College Professor Ralph Jaccodine to CNBC. “So, this is a news welcome to people who buy physical music.”

The exemption, which protects one of the fastest growing segments of the music industry, is also welcome on Wall Street.

Vinyl sales have roared in the last decade, particularly during the pandemic, driven by younger buyers and an appetite for nostalgia. PVC discs now represent almost three quarters of all income from the physical music of the United States, a jump of almost 20% since 2020, according to data from the Association of the Recording Industry of America.

“He is very encouraging and relief that physical music formats have classified as exempt from tariffs,” said Ryan Mitrovich, general manager of Vinyl Alliance, a non -profit organization that promotes physical means that works with manufacturers, distributors and music labels. “However, we are really not giving anything for granted here with the chaotic climate around commercial interruptions.”

The rise of sales has been lucrative for record seals such as Universal Music Groupor UMG, which works with Swift.

His latest album, “The tortured Poets Department,” sold 3.49 million physical and digital copies, according to the Luminete entertainment data company, which promoted a 9.6% leap in the income of the second quarter of UMG in 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Physical income, which includes Vinil, increased 14.4% during the quarter.

Without a swift album on shelves so far this year, the most recent UMG gain report, in July, showed a 4.5% increase in income year after year, but physical income decreased by 12.4%. UMG’s shares fell 24% after the release of profits from July.

Universal Music Group declined to comment.

The recession could be of short duration. Billboard estimates predict that first -week vinyl sales of the new 12 swift track album, which debuts on Friday, could exceed 1 million, breaking its own 859,000 record for “the department of tortured poets“

“Taylor Swift has a unique ability to boost the market through its decisions of what and how to launch music,” said Jaccodine, who has worked with artists like Bruce Springsteen. “The launch of Swift can and will probably cause a boom in the music business.”

Not everyone is celebrating tariff exemptions. Some American record manufacturers say business is being lost.

“We support tariffs because it helps us to manufacture, and we want to be part of the wave of doing things in the United States,” Alex Cushing, co -founder and president of Dallas Drawed Records told CNBC.

Most vinyl is pressed abroad, industry experts said, with the largest manufacturer, GZ Media, based in the Czech Republic. The CEO of GZ, Michal Štěrba, said the company has made best -selling albums for artists such as Lady Gaga, Madonna and U2. On average, the company produces 1 in 4 registers of plants around the world, including those of Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, he added.

“Our goal is to maintain the production as close as possible to the customer, so that a record sold in the US is also made.

If tariffs were imposed, said Štěrba, the costs would be transmitted to consumers. The Czech Republic is part of the European Union, which faces 15% general tariffs on EU exports to the United States.

“By maintaining tariff costs outside the supply chain, regardless of the product or the country, consumers benefit through better prices,” said Štěrba in a statement. “Ultimately, it is generally the client who has to pay a higher price if rates are applied.”

Cushing, a member of the Board of the Association of Manufacturers of Vinyl Record, said he believes that there would be more American jobs if the tariffs were applied to the vinyl.

“We could put more Americans workers to work with good salaries,” he said. “Our company makes 2 million annual records with a personnel of only 60 years. If you want to grow manufacturing jobs, this would be a large industry.”

Cushing said US manufacturers such as yours do not have the ability to handle the demand for an album at Swift scale. But for lower -scale artists, he said, import tariffs could change more businesses in the United States.

“Our raw materials are rates, but with the shipping costs and materials worldwide, regional shipping in the USA., Along with having a lower inventory, could help reduce costs,” said Cushing.

Some American manufacturers avoided additional costs earlier this year.

“The tariffs were definitely forecast, and the industry was preparing for this for quite some time,” said Mitrovich by Vinyl Alliance. “We saw many companies defend themselves against this by increasing their actions of ink, PVC and other things in the months prior to tariffs.”

For many artists, physical sales remain more lucrative than transmission.

In SpotifyThe profits usually range between $ 0.003 and $ 0.005 for transmission based on an artist’s contract with his record label, Jaccodine said. Meanwhile, artists generally enjoy between 10% and 25% of royalties in physical records, according to the American Society of Composers, authors and editors.

“Unless you are just a handful of musicians, you are basically not earning enough money from the transmission to hold,” Jaccodine said. “For large and small artists, merchandise records, CD, cassettes, hats, hoodie and ticket sale are bread and butter.”

As a comparison, Swift’s Eras Tour, which was the largest collection tour of all time, sold more than $ 2 billion in tickets for 149 shows for two years, reported the New York Times. Meanwhile, he won between $ 200 million and $ 400 million transmission platforms during that same period, according to Billboard figures.

Analysts expect the vinyl market to continue expanding, although not to the explosive rhythm seen during the pandemic.

“The vinyl market is strong and is likely to be in the predictable future, but there could always be supply problems,” Jaccodine said.

Generation Z has fed the resurgence of vinyl, industry experts said. Almost 60% of young people aged 18 to 24 in a survey conducted by the music manufacturer Key Production said they listen to physical music, the highest of any demographic group. The survey was conducted from February 27 to March 5, 2024 in the United Kingdom, and had 503 respondents.

The return of the vinyl also initiated an explosion in the number of “variants” released: collectible editions of albums or single with alternative cover, colored discs or exclusive vinyl bonus clues.

In Tiktok, “Vinyl Stars” accumulates millions of views as fans show strange variants and collections, causing demand and motivation of fans such as McDaniels to buy.

“It’s like Pokémon where you have to catch them all,” McDaniels said. “There is Fomo [fear of missing out] If someone has a variant that does not. “

Experts said that the interest of generation Z in vinyl is also a response to digital exhaustion.

“Many groups are on their screens paying rates to have access to the content, but they never have anything, so this gives them physical property,” Cushing said. “Vinyl is contrary to all the ease of listening to modern music and that is why people want it.”

No artist has capitalized the trend more than Swift.

“The tortured Poets Department” was the main album of 2024, which represents more than 6% of total album sales, more than seven times the next best -selling artist, according to Luminate. Swift launched 36 different album variants in the US. In all digital and physical music.

“The Life of A Showgirl” comes in at least seven different variants of color vinyl, each with a unique cover. For Swift and UMG, each exclusive edition of a vinyl, CD or cassette record has the potential to generate millions in additional income.

“Swift album sales act as drivers for the fortune of almost the entire music industry,” Jaccodine said. “Your fans wait with breathing contained for launch, but so is the industry.”

For McDaniels and thousands of other superfans, the persistent question is how easy the first exclusive variants will be.

“I know people think it’s crazy,” he said. “While a vinyl remains below $ 75 for a new release, I feel it is worth it. It’s like an addiction to obtain them, but I love collecting them.”