Swift Alert: The New App For All Things Taylor Swift
This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s fall editorial intern Raven Minyard. Find her on Instagram at @raven.minyard. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
Last weekend, Taylor Swift kicked off the South American leg of the Eras Tour with a bang; she performed an incredible mashup of “Is It Over Now” and “Out of the Woods” and gave us the hard launch to end all hard launches with the “Karma” lyric change dedicated to Travis Kelce, followed by a public kiss at the end of the show. Taylor can do something unhinged at any given moment, and as she begins her world tour, you never know what might happen during a show. For Swifties who want to watch it all unfold live, it can be hard to keep up with what time zone she’s performing in, and it’s going to get even more difficult when she’s in a different country every week. Luckily, there’s a new app to save the day. Swift Alert is an app for all things Taylor Swift and the Eras Tour, and it’s here to help Swifties stay up-to-date with anything noteworthy happening at the shows. In today’s article, we’re going to walk you through the Swift Alert app so you can always stay on top of breaking Taylor Swift news.
What Is The Swift Alert App?
Swift Alert is designed for Swifties to easily keep track of everything relating to Taylor Swift and the Eras Tour. When you download it, it automatically sets itself to your time zone and tells you what time each Eras Tour concert begins. For example, if it begins at 6:00 PM local time, it will convert to let you know it’s beginning at 3:00 PM your time. The main focus of the Swift Alert app is what the name suggests – to alert fans of anything new and exciting happening at the Eras Tour and help them keep track of the time if they want to watch any live streams. It’s perfect for anyone who loves watching the chaos unfold live when Taylor performs the surprise songs.
Features
The Swift Alert home page consists of two features: Taylor Trivia and Newsfeed. Both are pretty self-explanatory. Taylor Trivia includes different Taylor-themed quizzes you can take to pass the time while waiting for the Eras Tour to begin. Some categories include Lyrical Genius, Record Breakers, and Taylor Talk. The Newsfeed section compiles social media and news posts from Taylor herself, Taylor Nation, the Eras Tour, and TS Tour Tips.
The next page, shown as a play button icon at the bottom of the screen, is for live streams and videos. When a show is being performed, this is the page where you’ll find some of the best live streams across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram and even Discord.
By clicking the calendar icon, you access the Upcoming Shows page. Here, you can see all the upcoming tour dates and their start times listed in your time zone.
The other two icons at the bottom of the screen are for premium features, which we’ll cover in the next section.
Premium Features
Unfortunately, some of the Swift Alert app’s best features are blocked by a paywall. At $1.99, you get lifetime access, so it’s not too expensive, but if you’re the type of person who refuses to pay for an app on principle (like me) this is definitely a downside.
Premium members can choose the alerts they get. By clicking the bell icon, you’re presented with the sets for each of Taylor Swift’s eras, and you can choose which sets you get notified for. For example, if you wanted to be notified when she starts the Red set and the surprise song set, you’d click the icons and then receive push notifications to your phone.
By clicking the music note icon, premium members also gain access to a complete list of songs performed at the Eras Tour. Divided by albums, you can see which songs are on the setlist, which songs have been performed as surprise songs and which songs are still up for grabs.
There is also a Taylor Trivia section specific to the premium version, so you’d gain access to a number of quizzes other members can’t play.
Is It Worth It?
When I first downloaded the Swift Alert app, there was no premium version. Everything was free. You could set up the alerts you wanted, and you had access to the complete list of surprise songs. Only a day or two later, the premium version rolled out, effectively locking me out of the features I’d originally downloaded the app for. Needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled with the way it all turned out.
That being said, I still get notifications about the Eras Tour; I just don’t get to choose what they are. During last Sunday’s performance, I remember being notified for the Folklore and 1989 sets, and for Saturday’s performance, I was notified about what the surprise songs were but not when they were starting. So I still got some of the features I signed up for, just not in the way I thought I would.
While I’m not personally willing to pay for a premium version, if you’re really invested in keeping up with all the details of the Eras Tour, I think $1.99 is worth it. It’s a lot easier to keep track of everything when it’s all conveniently located in one app. And even the basic version is a great way to keep up with time zones and to easily find a live stream. With the Eras Tour set to continue all the way through 2024, I’m sure there will be plenty of exciting things for Swifties to keep up with.
What do you think of the Swift Alert app? Will you be using it? Let us know in the comments!