Seventeen animated Taylor Swift performances — wearing pink sunglasses, posing in her purple Speak now dress, posing in a “Not A Lot Going On the Moment” T-shirt — are printed on an Amazon page for a 24-piece cupcake-topper set. “Our Singer cake toppers are made from high quality food grade cardboard,” the description reads. “It can be safely applied!” The $12.99 birthday set, listed by wgzftrys, which is based in Guangdong Shen, China, is among hundreds of Swift products available on Amazon — some bearing the singer's name and likeness big star, others use 'TS' or a generic Taylor. -image of young-blonde-woman.
They are mostly illegal toys, according to music industry sources – a form of international copyright infringement that costs clothing, electronics, toy and sporting goods companies billions of dollars. In 2023, US Border and Customs Protection seized nearly $2.8 billion in copyright-infringing goods shipped from several countries—mainly China, Turkey, and Canada. Jeff JambolThe CEO of Jam Inc., which manages the estates of the Doors, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and others, says his lawyers serve “dozens and dozens” of cease and desist orders a month on suspected pirates of various e-commerce and other websites which cost artists about $20,000 to $50,000 for every $1 million in annual T-shirt sales.
“As far as the money we're losing, who knows?” says Steve Culver, president of Dreamer Media, a Nashville merchandising company that works with Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Melissa Etheridge and others. “It's very easy to set up an Amazon store — if you close, you just put it back up.”
Representatives for Swift and her label, Republic Records, did not respond to requests for comment for this story as they prepare to release her new album. The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19. But commercial music companies have been battling this kind of online bootlegging for years and say the problem is getting worse. In 2021, Global Merchandising Services, citing rampant Motörhead trademark infringement and counterfeiting, filed a lawsuit against 278 companies that “do not use normal business nomenclature and instead appear made up”. Those online stores sell T-shirts and other products, according to the suit, and each seller “is likely to cause and has caused confusion, error and deception by and among consumers.”
“It's a game of Whack-a-Mole, and it's consistent every day,” he says Barry Drinkwater, executive chairman of the 15-year-old merchandiser, which handles merchandise for Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden, Niall Horan and more. He estimates the company issues “hundreds of thousands” of takedown notices a year: “All we can do is hold it and spend some dollars,” he adds.
Swift's popularity is so huge that companies everywhere have co-opted her name, likeness and song titles to market and sell products big and small, from a Royal Caribbean International cruise for Swifties to 'Tayl-gating' donuts ” to Swift flashing double middle fingers on a t-shirt sold on eBay to more than 1,000 Swift-themed items on handmade retailer Etsy. “There are definitely bootlegs and unauthorized things being sold on Etsy,” says a representative for a major artist. “But will you go after the one who makes a necklace? No, you don't want to be that guy.”
Swift-branded products on Amazon – distinctly different from those sold in its official store – include pillows, socks, tights and key rings. A 14-piece friendship bracelet set, sold for $12.98 by GOIPKO, features several of her albums and “I ❤️ TS”? a women's “Tay Tay Cheerleader” costume, priced at $32.99 from Mokkin, bears the initials “TS.” A knitted hat with the Nirvana logo (but not the Nirvana name), sold by a China-based company, costs $9.99, while a pair of purple “Best Gaga Ever” socks, from Chinese store ZJXHPO, costs $14. 99 dollars.
Some of these products boldly use the artists' names and likenesses, while others are more ambiguous. About an “It's Me Hi I'm the Birthday Girl It's Me” t-shirt, copyright attorney Michael N. Cohen says, “It invokes a Taylor Swift lyric, but it's been tweaked, so it's quite transformative? Probably.” A representative for Swift could send a takedown notice, so Amazon could answer that question — or, in the case of a lawsuit, a jury could decide.
(Several companies that list these types of Swift products on Amazon did not respond to email interview requests, though one seller replied “sorry” and another wrote, “Sorry. We're not interested.”)
Amazon declined interview requests, but a spokesperson cited its intellectual property policy for sellers, which prohibits infringing the rights of “trademarks or other rights holders,” and advised consulting an attorney. Amazon has algorithms that spot unauthorized or illegal products posted by sellers, but it can take time to spot and remove them, especially if they're ambiguous, like a T-shirt image that looks a bit like Taylor Swift that contains words that look a little like lyrics from her songs. As of 2020, according to the company, Amazon has spent $1.2 billion and employed 15,000 people to fight counterfeiting and fraud on the site, and “valid infringement notices submitted by brands” have fallen by 30% despite the overall increase in sales in the company. Amazon's Crime Stoppers Unit is the department responsible for removing “bad actor accounts,” according to the company's website.
Apparel retailing — as opposed to the separate problem of unauthorized T-shirts sold in concert parking lots — has grown over the past 15 years, Jampol says. During this time, 3D printers became more sophisticated and enabled the print-on-demand industry. “One of the barriers to entry for apparel is, 'I have to have five designs and four colors each, for both men and women, in extra small, small, medium, large, extra large,' and then part for save it,” he says. “Now, with print-on-demand, I can make 5,000 designs in 182 colors, and when someone orders a very small pink one in that style, I just print it.”
Bootleg merchandise is prevalent on many retail sites, including “fake e-commerce storefronts,” as the Motörhead suit claims, that counterfeiters have created to match the artists' official websites. With reputable retailers like Amazon, artists can submit takedown notices — but it helps, Cohen says, for artists to trademark their names beforehand. “Whatever platform it is, they're going to do their own formal review and decide whether to take it down,” says Cohen. “That's why the deposition is so critical. This proves that there is validity. Amazon and platforms like it want to see: “Do you have the registration number?”
In the United States, solo artists and bands have “trademark rights” to their names and likenesses, so they can send cease-and-desist letters or file lawsuits against unauthorized marketers. The process is more difficult in a different area. “You can have rights in one country, but not in another country,” he says Douglas Masters, an intellectual property attorney in Chicago. “It's a big world.” And even for artists who are aggressive in going after international copyright infringers, “People are sometimes hard to find,” Masters adds.
That's why KISS bassist Gene Simmons contacts the management company about every other day to flag an infringer on the band's trademark. “Gene is online all the time and comes up with more of them than anyone else,” he says Doc McGhee, manager of the band. “It's definitely a big problem. We are chasing them. We have a team of lawyers. It's just theft.”
