Taylor Swift: The Master of Gamification

The Taylor Swift Universe Explained

Apr 25, 2024

Gamification for dummies

The story of gamification starts with a guy called B.F Skinner, as most stories do. Well, Skinner had a bit of an obsession with controlling environments so that peoples’ behaviour could be easier determined or controlled. He tested his theory on pigeons in a cage he called the Skinner box. He wanted to figure out how to get pigeons to peck the button that occasionally dispensed seeds. The goal was to get these pigeons to peck the button as much as possible, eventually he came to three conclusions.

Pigeons peck the most when they get immediate rather than delayed rewards.
They peck the most when the reward is randomised.
They pecked long after the seed dispenser was empty.

Eventually they saw pecking the button as a reward in itself. This led to rewards being classified into two ways.

Primary rewards
Secondary rewards

This is as far as Skinner would take his work until another dude enters the scene, Harvard’s very own McConnell, whose work would directly radicalise the unabomber. Yeah that unabomber, he didn’t think it was cool to put human beings into a perpetual Skinner box, but we can all agree he obviously didn’t go about things in the best way.

Today gamification is practically in everything and Skinner and McConnel were onto something given that game apps are the most profitable apps year after year. Yes, games make more money than Uber, Netflix, Spotify or all the glamorous tech companies. They make up to 70% of all revenue for both the IOS App Store and Android’s Play Store.

Apps that aren’t game apps, still use gamification principles to keep users engaged, and an app that has mastered this is Duolingo. They’ve basically used gamification as a central strategy for engagement and customer retention. I’ve used Duolingo on and off for the last ten years and I’ve found myself obsessing over that leaderboard but my French on the other hand? We won’t go into that, but you can probably guess.

Fun fact, McConnel approached companies like Microsoft and IBM about gamifying education in the 70s and they rejected his ideas. He was obviously far ahead of his time. It makes you think though, doesn’t it? Someone has already thought about the thing that will define all our lives in the next 50 years, while we’re pecking away in the Skinner box. That’s a rabbit hole for another day, for today we’re going to be Alice in Wonderland in the Taylor Swift universe.

What on earth does gamification have to do with Taylor Swift?

Simply put? That’s how she has achieved all this success. So no, it’s not because she’s overrated. She’s just an incredible games master, who has managed to use games to acquire new customers, maintain an insane amount of engagement in her product and most importantly customer retention. Taylor is not just the talent in the music business controlled by the suits. She’s created her own strings and alchemised them for the good of her fans and of course her pockets.

What games does Taylor play?

Honestly, to study every single game she’s ever played and how these have catapulted her into insane stardom, you would need to write a thesis. So for today I will do two things.

Give you evidence of her using gamification to increase engagement with her music and brand over the years.
Show you how she achieved a billion streams in 3 days for The Tortured Poets Department album.

Section 1: Here are some Easter eggs for you

Google’s 1989 Vault Mayhem: When Taylor Swift was about to release 1989 Taylor’s version, she and her team partnered with Google to create a game where her fans would answer Taylor Swift related trivia in order to find out what the names of the vault tracks were. The vault tracks are the tracks that didn’t make the cut when she originally released the album, but now that she’s re-recorded all her albums, she’s decided to create more anticipation by adding some new material. What’s really interesting about Taylor’s games is that they require her fans to collaborate in order to solve the puzzles. In this game each fan could only answer 89 questions out of 33 million answers. In true Swiftie fashion, it took them only a few days to answer all the questions. This creates a sense of community that deeply entrenches the Taylor Swift universe. So yeah, for everyone complaining about not understanding the album or the Easter eggs taking over the album, that’s the whole point. You need to play the game in order to get the full experience and that’s how your granddad or best friend ‘suddenly’ became a Swiftie overnight. If you truly want to give an analysis worth its salt on anything Swift related, you’ve got to go into the rabbit hole like an investigative journalist vs just a music critic on a deadline. In the end, this is how she not only went number one when she dropped the album but became the most searched artist on Google.
Kaleidoscope Theory: When it was time for Swift to release the album Lover, she dropped multiple Easter eggs with the most important one being hidden in her first single Me. She announced this through a partnership with YouTube where she told her fans to look for the title in the Me video. Once the video dropped there was a lot of kaleidoscope imagery and her fans were convinced this was this clue but it turns out they had missed the big sign that said ‘Lover’ in neon pink. This hunt for the album title led to fans rewatching the video and streaming the song over and over again to get the answer. And once again, Taylor broke the internet, records and got another number one.

Taylor Swift may be the ultimate game master but she’s not deceptive, in fact she not only admits it but she leans into the games and sees it as a way to have fun with her fans and strengthen the Swfitie community. Notice I say community, because this isn’t just a fan base. If you think I’m exaggerating, just google the evergreen fan organised listening parties or Taylor Swift nights at a cute little cafe or pub near you. There are very few if any artists who have managed to create an actual community that organises by itself to bond over their favourite musician.

Section 2: The Games Played in The Tortured Poets’ Department

Find the clue: Taylor’s team partnered with Apple Music throughout the TTPD release week for a scavenger hunt to find clues about the album. They had to listen to her music to find capital letters and piece the words together that eventually formed the sentence "I hereby conduct this post mortem." A message from the chairman of the tortured poets department.
QR codes in different cities: Taylor’s team had TTPD QR codes plastered across different cities all over the world. The Swifties had to work together globally to put together the word from each letter, from each city and unscramble them. Each city had a different letter and they spelled out the name of the lead single, Fortnight featuring Post Malone.
Promotional Video with 2 o’clock references: Taylor nation released a promotional video that had clues about what to expect from the tortured poets department. There were many references to the number 2 on clocks and the number 14 in Roman numerals. This was the clue that she was dropping a double album at 2am EST and the lead single would be 14 or Fortnight.
The Fortnight announcement: Once she released Fortnight, this threw fans off the double album trail but it turned out to have a double meaning because the Swfities still didn’t know that it was a double album assuming that 2 just meant two weeks.
The pens to guess the depth of the poetry: Many fans were wondering what the sound of the album would be. In the promotional video we leave the glitter pens behind in the maximalist Midnights room and enter the more minimalist or bare TTPD room signifying a more stripped back and honest album. Taylor Swift uses three types of pens to write her music, glitter for on the surface writing, fountain for slightly deeper writing and quill for music where poetry is the main character. So if you felt that the poetry was too much, that was the point.
Spotify countdown: A few days before the release of the album, she began a countdown on Spotify with a special video to drum up more excitement for the Spotify fan base. This is also where she took the opportunity to drop the lyrics to one of the singles on the album called “Who’s afraid of little old me?”
Library installation with Spotify: Swift partnered with Spotify to set up a library installation that fans could interact with in real life. Once again, reinforcing in person community among her fans, for the duration of the 3 day installation, there were different clues that fans had to work together to solve. These clues included the clock always being at 2 o’clock, and a Stevie Nicks tambourine foreshadowing the song Clara Bow. Finally, fans found lyrics at the venue that weren’t included in the first album, which left them wondering where those lyrics were. In the end they would be in the second album, I guess that was a clue in itself.
ThanK you aIMe: Once the album was out, she couldn’t resist ensuring virality through more Easter eggs. This time an obvious diss track to Kim Kardashian and potentially former bff Karlie Kloss, where she capitalized the letters K I M as an ode to the clues she gave in her debut album, the beginning of the Easter eggs tradition. Of course everyone went to stream the single out of curiosity helping her boost streaming numbers.
Fortnight Challenge/TikTok UGC game: Finally to close the games off, she released a game on TikTok where fans had to complete a series of actions like create UGC content to get an exclusive Swiftie profile frame. The prompts include, following Taylor Swift, Taylor Nation, adding Fortnight to your music app, and creating a TikTok video with the hashtag TTPD. This ensured that all we could talk about on TikTok was the new album and allowed the fans to have fun with her music.

This set of games was rolled out over a period of seven days. Her fans were so engrossed in her music, and the Taylor universe that they were warmed up for the album release, there was no way it was going to fail. I’ve already said a lot about Taylor’s use of gamification, I have two main takeaways from this.

Artists are no longer making music for the masses, they realize how swiftly that pendulum can swing, the masses are fickle. Love them, hate them or disagree with their personal choices, it really doesn’t matter because they are building communities that will rally around them come what may. Many businesses would kill for such engaged and loyal communities. Perhaps there are some nuggets to pick up from this article.
Artists are taking the business side of their careers more seriously, especially in the age of streaming. It’s time to engage them as more than just the talent, but as multi-faceted and shrewd business people.

All Swiftie facts were verified by my personal Swiftie and best friend @luba_dube on TikTok!