Taylor Swift makes history as music business creaks

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Taylor Swift made history on Sunday by winning music’s most coveted prize, album of the year, for a fourth time — becoming the first artist to do so since the Grammy Awards were created in the 1950s and leaping ahead of legends such as Frank Sinatra.

Behind her commercial and cultural triumphs, however, is a music industry that feels far less assured this year.

Swift was already the toast of Los Angeles this week, as music’s most influential executives and artists gathered for events surrounding the industry’s biggest night. In addition to the ceremony’s glitz and red carpets, the Grammy Awards hold business implications, with winning artists usually receiving a boost to sales and streams as well as more leverage in future contracts. 

Swift, whose sales made up an estimated 2 per cent of the entire US music business last year, bigger than the entire genre of jazz or classical music, was crowned the industry’s most powerful person by Billboard — a recognition the music publication has typically given to male executives. 

At 34, Swift defeated a room full of them on Wednesday night, including her own label head, Universal Music chief executive Lucian Grainge, who was dethroned to the number two position in Billboard’s rankings. “I’ve never, ever in my entire career been so thrilled to be number two on a list,” quipped the ultra-competitive Grainge.

Yet Swift’s success is an anomaly, rather than a bellwether for the rest of the business.

Universal, the industry goliath Swift is signed to, is set to lay off hundreds of staff in the coming weeks. The company is not throwing its annual pre-Grammys artist showcase, a typically lavish event, for fear it would appear insensitive amid the cuts, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The chief executive of one large music company described the mood in Los Angeles this…