An essay I wrote in 2015 has been published on Esthesis. Click “READ MORE” to visit the website. It focuses on the music industry, but especially on Taylor Swift. A brief excerpt is below:

This article will detail various artists who, rather than embrace a changing music industry landscape currently moving past digital downloads and gravitating toward streaming platforms, instead market their albums with tactics to turn their audiences back towards past models of music consumption.

Indeed, a number of pop stars still focus on strategies to emphasize their album releases and profit as much as possible from album sales. Many artists do so by arranging exclusive album releases with major corporations, like Walmart and Target, in an attempt to offer fans extra incentives to buy physical album copies. In doing so, these artists take a stance not only against free streaming sites that pay artists little, but also reject even digital downloading platforms like iTunes. Although music consumers, adamantly against paying for a full album, are still able to pirate the music illegally, in actuality, this exclusive partnership method has proven successful for many established, popular artists.