So all-encompassing has been the media and public interest in Taylor Swift this week that it would be easy to imagine everyone is a fan. Clearly, though, that is not the case.

There are those who can’t stand her – haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate – and there are those who have barely even heard the name, or have heard it but don’t really know what it means, or why it matters.

But matter it does. Because regardless of what you think of her music, what Swift has accomplished is truly extraordinary – and how she has achieved it is equally so.

The Eras tour that has brought her to Australia has become the first concert tour in history to gross more than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion), and is predicted to wrap up with a haul close to $US2.2 billion from its North American dates alone. With an average ticket price of around $195 (including the limited-view seats released last week), and a capacity of 96,000, the three Melbourne shows will have grossed close to $19 million each.

The next closest in terms of revenue is Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road farewell tour, which by the end of 2023 had grossed $US939 million – but had taken five years and five times as many shows as Swift to get there.

She isn’t the biggest-selling artist in history, and not even the biggest-selling woman – Madonna still holds that record, with an estimated 400 million units (albums and singles, and digital equivalents) sold since 1982. But her 200 million units places her in sixth spot on the female artist chart, behind (in ascending order) Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Rihanna – and significantly, only Rihanna is still meaningfully active as a recording and performing artist.

Swift (and Rihanna) enjoyed much of their success at a time when the recorded music industry appeared to be in terminal decline (a slump from which it has miraculously recovered, thanks to revenue from legal subscription-based streaming such as Spotify, where Swift has around 104 million monthly listeners, and was the most streamed artist of 2023, with more than 26 billion streams).

But Swift has also been credited with helping to drive the resurgence of vinyl and other legacy formats. When her re-recorded 1989 (Taylor’s Version) dropped last November, not only did its tracks occupy eight of the spots on Billboard’s top 10 singles chart (where streaming is the order of the day), but 93 per cent (1.261 million) of units sold were in physical formats – CD, vinyl LP and cassette. That was almost half of all physical recorded music sold in the US that week.