all that hard work raked in $2 billion in ticket sales, according to investopedia. went quicker than coldplay�*s tour around the same time. american university economics professor kara reynolds explains what's behind the success of the swift tour. so, it's twice as big as any other tour, she famously was the first billion—dollar tour. you mentioned has since surpassed $2 billion, 150 shows, but also it was $14 million per show so she is a hard worker, she went everywhere but also, she was getting a lot of money per seat as well. you teach a swiftonomics class in the university, what are the economics at work behind taylor swift? yes, so, we talk a lot about the music — economics of the music industry, one thing that's happened in the music industry more generally is as the cost of listening of music and streaming music has come down, the cost of going to live music has gone up, the artists are turning to touring to make all their revenue so that's part of what's going on but the other part is really about market power. we spend a lot of time talking about the market