Star report
Hart calls on fellow stars to help with Harvey relief
Stars including Kevin Hart, Katy Perry and country singer Chris Young are lining up to help raise money for flood relief efforts in Houston.
Hart has pledged $25,000 to victims of Hurricane Harvey. In an Instagram video posted Sunday, Hart said he was starting a celebrity challenge to donate money to the cause. Beyonce, Jay Z, Justin Timberlake, Dwayne Johnson and Jerry Seinfeld are among the stars he called on to do the same.
Young said in a Twitter video that he has started an online fundraiser for the Red Cross and donated $100,000 to it. Perry urged viewers to donate while hosting MTV’s Video Music Awards on Sunday night and tweeted a link to the Red Cross’ donation efforts to more than 100 million followers on Twitter.
Barrage of marketing accompanies Swift single
On Friday, Taylor Swift released a new song, “Look What You Made Me Do,” and thus, as the music industry tip sheet Hits put it, “launched the first ICBM in her fall offensive.”
The full assault will include a new album, “Reputation,” due Nov. 10, and a tour. The tools of the attack include videos, merchandise and a flotilla of corporate partnerships with the likes of Target and UPS (whose delivery trucks will be emblazoned with images of her).
The song’s initial numbers were predictably huge. On Friday, “Look What You Made Me Do” racked up 10.1 million streams around the world on Spotify, by far setting its record for the most plays in a single day, the company said. (It seems like ages ago, doesn’t it, that Swift was publicly feuding with Spotify?) It was also the most played song on U.S. radio stations, with 4,228 spins that day, according to Nielsen. The music video, released Sunday night during MTV’s Video Music Awards, had 24 million views by noon Monday. (Even the “lyric video,” featuring just the words to the song, set records, with 19 million views in its first 24 hours, the best first-day total for that kind of video.)
Yet the brazenness of Swift’s marketing strategy has not gone unnoticed. To sell concert tickets, she is using Verified Fan, a new system from Ticketmaster that screens prospective buyers to block bots and scalpers; Bruce Springsteen, Harry Styles and “Hamilton” have all used it. But Swift is telling her fans that they can improve their chances of getting a ticket by buying more stuff and engaging in “boost activities,” like posting on social media. If all you want is the CD of “Reputation,” you can buy it from Swift’s site for $15, and for an additional $41 you can have it delivered on the day it comes out. Some have called this exploitation, but so far Swift’s fans seem to have no problem: Early Friday, her ticketing site was down from excessive traffic.