This past weekend, Taylor Swift found herself celebrating her 25th birthday in grand fashion: by closing out the annual z100 Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden in front of nearly 20,000 people, including Sam Smith, Iggy Azalea and Calvin Harris.
“New York City, it’s good to be home!” she yelled toward the beginning of her set.
A recent arrival in the Big Apple, Swift should also feel at home with the aforementioned names who watched her set after gracing the stage before her — all of them are among the music industry’s biggest winners of the past year. Let’s take a deeper look. First things first…
She sold 1.3 million copies of her latest album, 1989, in its first week. No other solo act has seen an album go platinum in its opening week since Swift last did it with Red in 2012. Even more impressive, her latest effort is the only album that has gone platinum at all in 2014 (unless you count the Frozen soundtrack).
But Swift’s record sales aren’t the only thing that make her one of this year’s winners. She’s taken a stand on the monetization of music, first with an op-ed she penned for the Wall Street Journal this summer and more recently by pulling her music from Spotify.
