Wildest streams! Inside the fan-powered broadcasts of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour | Music

When Taylor Swift released The Eras Tour movie last October, it quickly became the highest-grossing concert movie of all time. Fans danced in the screening aisles. Critics praised Brett Turnbull’s cinematography. When I went to see the real Eras tour in Edinburgh two weeks ago, I was fascinated to see dozens of people watching the film while on the train on their way to see the real life concert.

The film is a phenomenon in its own right: a glossy and bombastic ticket to an event you may have missed, or one you may want to relive forever. But can I assume that you’ve never seen the Eras tour on screen until you’ve taken part in one of the unofficial live fan streams that run every night of the tour? Here, the shaky camera footage captured by phones scattered around the stadiums makes The Blair Witch Project look like Blade Runner. A phone pointed at the stage by the gods can’t hope to capture the sound range of a stadium, and so a distant, blown-out Swift often has to compete with a gleeful roar from your DIY documentarian.

I’m tuning in to one such feed on June 13th, when Swift plays Liverpool on the 100th show of her Eras tour (an occasion that has fans convinced a big announcement is in the offing). By 7:15 p.m., 21,000 people were online watching fans strolling into the arena’s standing room area before proceedings began. In the bottom corner, another screen shows an American fan, Kevin, facilitating these streams by jumping between the feeds of fans who have told him they’re happy to film. His walls are covered in Swift posters and he appears to be drinking from a giant bucket of popcorn from the movie Eras Tour. The overflowing live chat, which runs in a third screen, is full of Swift-specific emojis: chief among them is the power pose from the reputation portion of the set, featuring Swift in the one-legged suit that became infamous among fans for his growing frayed spots.

These are the kinds of details that get magnified when you get to watch every night of the tour. Bigger announcements, like the much-speculated announcement of the remaining two records, Reputation and Swift’s self-titled debut, have been much less so.

The kits are a big source of speculation in the chat because many of the fans here also play a fantasy football-style guessing game called Mastermind, which is part of Quick warning, an app that sends notifications to fans around the world as she moves through the different parts of the show. I check in and write down my guesses about what outfits she’ll wear and what instruments she’ll play.

By the time a minute has passed before the show starts – with 50,000 spectators already tuned in – I feel a completely unexpected sense of heightened anticipation and delight. The shaky footage and screams look just like the shaky videos I have of my friends in Edinburgh – a reminder that tens of thousands of people are having their own euphoric experience every night. The second song on set, Lover, is drowned out by a boisterous camerawoman. “Sophie sings a bit, but we’ll let her sing as she’s doing us a big favor with this sight,” says Kevin (whom, unfortunately, I can’t reach to speak to).

I learned about the live streams and the app from American fan Melissa Rogers, 36, who I met last year on the Eras tour in Los Angeles. A Swiftie since her debut in 2006, Rogers has been on the tour six times, has her seventh ticket confirmed and hopes to travel to London in August for her eighth. “It’s so much more than just a show,” she says, citing the friendships she’s made and the bracelets she’s exchanged. “It’s definitely affected my life in a lot of ways.” In addition to performing in real life, she’s turned on almost every live stream, often playing it in the background while working. Although she knows the set so well that she could certainly perform it herself, she says the predictions of potential announcements make it exciting. “And the chat feature is one of my favorite parts,” she adds. “It’s almost like being with everyone at the concert and seeing their thoughts. It’s so pure and unadulterated.”

While Rogers has also seen the tour film “seven or eight times” — and it was partially shot at the show where we met — the streams “have a lot more character,” she says. “I love it when live streamers scream and sing because that’s how it should be. I think it’s fascinating. I have heard people crying in the streams. I just feel very connected in a way that you don’t get from film.” Plus, she adds, cameramen often catch cute mistakes in an otherwise meticulously executed performance, which has led fans to coin the ‘Errors tour’ meme.

“We’ve seen people get offered to live on a stream,” says Kyle Muma, a North Carolina-based software engineer who developed the Swift Alert app. “There are people who sing with – not to be disrespectful – not the best voice in the world, but they’re having the time of their lives and they don’t care. And they shouldn’t care what anyone online thinks.

Mom and his wife saw the opening night of the tour in Glendale last March and quickly realized there was a demand from fans around the world to know when Swift started the “surprise songs” portion of the set, towards the end. He hired a developer and they launched when Swift played Mexico City in September. “Twenty-five or 30 people signed up for alerts — and most were my family and friends, not anyone who really cared.”

But when the tour reached Buenos Aires in November, there was a sudden spike of 100,000 downloads. Swift Alerts briefly sat between Disney+ and Roku in the Apple Store charts. (Mom appreciates her leaderboard screenshot.) A few weeks ago, the app surpassed half a million users. It’s free to use and play, although fans can donate to the costs of launching the app, which Muma is doing with his wife and a friend. “Most of the money goes to our support programmer,” he says. “Another big chunk goes to the prizes we give out to the Mastermind winners. And then we pay ourselves a very, very small amount to make up for some of the time we put into it.

Each night of the tour, one of them is watching live and manually signaling the various transitions in the show. “That’s the part I’m not sure anyone appreciates,” he laughs. “When I first started this, I tried to automate it, I had a spreadsheet. But we found that the Champagne Problems applause” – in which fans try to outdo each other with a nightly standing ovation – “throws all the timing off. And what we can’t afford is for the thousands of people who depend on this signal to miss out on the surprise songs. So we’re always monitoring and sending out alerts, answering Mastermind questions and managing our social media.”

Swift Enterprise is no stranger to pursuing copyright infringement from fan made items on Etsy to theme park in the US that plays her music without a license. Yet live streams and Swift Alerts were allowed to continue. “Obviously, if they’re reading this, we appreciate it,” Mom says with a nervous laugh. “We thought there was a chance they wouldn’t be excited about it.” His theory as to why they were left alone is that at peak times, like the surprise set, they send 100,000 people to various live streams. “I hope we’re helping the ecosystem. That’s the purpose of what we do – to give more people a way to have fun around the show. I tell people all the time: If I was trying to make this my job, we’d be collecting user data and selling ads and charging a subscription fee. We were never involved in that.”

Swift has even acknowledged live performances during shows, says Rogers, whose encyclopedic knowledge I adhere to. “I think Taylor realizes the demand for the show, that people want to see her and that this is a really special thing for them,” she says. “And she’s already sold all the tickets, she’s taken the money she was going to get from the ticket sales. If I had to guess, I think she’s just excited that people who weren’t able to make it can see it and be part of the community and interact with other Swifties.”

In the live stream, a girl puts down her camera, yelling, “I have to take my shoes off!” Two girls taking over the stream thank Kevin “so much for what you’re doing.” Another later worries, “My friendship bracelets are too tight.” Kevin changes outfits for each part of the show and pretends to drink from a bottle of champagne during champagne problems. Dozens of people spell the meme on the lyrics of Ready For It? sounding like “duck is vegan”. Sitting at home with a beer, I’m feeling fascinated – if conflicted – when news broke that Swift has just released six UK-exclusive digital variants of The Tortured Poets Department in an apparent – and ultimately successful – trying to stay #1 and save Charli XCX’s album Bro in second position. Amid growing discontent over Swift’s business practices and political muteness in a pivotal election year, the live stream underscored how much of the goodness of this venture comes from the sweet, heartfelt generosity of fans.

The moment finally arrives as Swift acknowledges the 100th show, and fans on live commentary are braced for the potential announcement of Reputation (Taylor’s version). Not coming.

“I think a lot of people are like, ‘How are you going to celebrate the 100th show?'” she tells the crowd. “Celebrating the 100th show for me means it’s the first time I’ve admitted to myself that this tour has to end in December.”

The chat has been split between fans hoping for a new leg in 2025, terrified they may never see the tour, and those chiding them for expecting too much. “No need to GET anything guys,” wrote one named Ali. “Look what she’s given us already. I’m crying lol… This tour (and her music in general) has saved me through some really tough times.” Kevin reminds the crowd – now 81,711, significantly more than the 55,000 at Anfield – to “enjoy more at the shows because we know there’s only a limited amount left.”

After the tour is over, says Rogers, “I’ll probably move away from it a little bit, but I think I’ll always come back to it. It will always be very special to me.” Mumma says he and his small team have been talking about whether they could develop the app into something else, though it sounds like they’ll be taking a well-deserved break. For both, the memory of the community that formed around these streams will endure. “On previous tours, the technology meant that wasn’t even possible,” Rogers says. “So you have this whole new aspect of the Swiftie community and you’re connecting with people from all over the world. I think it’s so generous and amazing that people stream for the benefit of others.”

Meanwhile, Mumma receives messages about the streams helping people with divorces and deaths. “We’re literally getting messages from people in war-torn countries saying, ‘This is the thing that brings me joy in my everyday life.'” That’s incredibly powerful for anyone, but for someone to do it through music and touring is really amazing. We’re just a small part of it where we can provide a little board game.”