Taylor Swift - The Life of a Showgirl (October 3, 2025) • Page 91

seconded (just out of pure curiosity)

 

I get it for vinyl, doing it for digital albums is wild.

 

49% say they do it for the charts, we're so cooked

 

I can’t really fault her for vinyl variants when Twenty One Pilots just dropped 20+ variants for their new album two weeks ago and nobody really cared.

 

And only 23% say they do it for the actual music, yikes

 

I don’t really care about variants when it’s just “this one is pink! this one is blue!”- I feel like that doesn’t even really count tbh. But alt covers and tracks on different versions annoys me

 

Underrated post

 

I think my most hated “music guy” trope is when someone says “oh you just gotta spend more time with it/listen to it a few more times” as if you’re not intently listening enough to know if you like it or not.

There are many albums I’ve liked that I’ve grown to like more after repeat listens because I’m picking up on more than what initially captivated me to begin with and there are many albums I’ve revisited later in life that struck differently and I like more than when they were released. This isn’t either of those situations - it actually gets worse the more I hear it and “let it breathe.”

 

The question was why do you buy variants, not why do you buy albums!

 

Spoken like someone who doesn't want to financially support his favorite K-pop artists.

 

Some people just really like collecting shit. That’s a big part of what keeps American single issue comics afloat: variant covers that people collect because they look cool, regardless of the stories inside, sometimes grabbing a full line of variants. (Just wait ‘til Taylor Swift gets into blind bags!)

 

shit, don't let her see this!

 

Just listened to “betty”. Love that fucking song.

the last 45 seconds of that song just about the best thing she’s ever done.

 

Yeah exactly!!!

 

Her breaking first week sales records and whatnot is sooo much less impressive when she pads her numbers this fucking much.

 

It's like she can't be happy unless she's the most streamed, most sold first-week artist out there and the sheer overload of TS since 2020 is added on top of this, shit's exhaaaaaausting. You have better first week numbers than literally anyone I can think of, Taylor, it's not that serious

 

and it just makes it so much less serious when she kinda fakes it by having a shit ton of variants and versions to boost those numbers. it's just off-putting and, like you said, exhausting. what happened to just letting the music speak for itself. she's getting these numbers without even giving fans a note of the music, which also makes it feel gross.

 

I mean yeah sure bonus tracks editions have existed for decades but used to be a home for b-sides and alternate takes, not whatever this is

 

yeah, it's interesting. besides the fans who NEED to own everything, who actually really wants these voice memo demos of an album they're disappointed in?

it's like she's sitting on her phone reading all these headlines, staring up at the ceiling like "wow, this is my most successful album ever. people really love this!" i respect her being so prolific, writing her own music, etc, but the inauthenticity of her "brand" has gotten real old to me.

 

One thing that's truly impressive is that this is the first week in the entire Trump presidency where he's not the entire news cycle. In that regard, it's refreshing.

 

The variant thing is obnoxious, but I think I’m at the acceptance stage of grief on that just being a part of the industry now. IMO, it’s much less destructive to the art form than cramming 40 songs on your album for the sole purpose of improving your chart performance, something I’m still not ready to accept. Those Morgan Wallen releases should not be classified as albums.

 

Merch is dropping at 12 EST today.

 

Fixed this for you

 

I'm curious - for each of these digital versions she's put out that include two or three acoustic songs, she's clearly marketing the digital album for $5-7 or whatever. If someone (@irthesteve ?) were to buy all of them, are you getting 4-5 digital copies of the regular album or is it just adding the extra tracks? From a charting standpoint, technically that's another sale of the album but it's not like a CD where I have an extra physical CD. Should that even count?

If I've already bought digital package 1, buying digital package 2 is really only adding whatever acoustic tracks are included + the voice memos (something tells me there's a loophole that requires it to be at least a minimum number of songs - thus the voice memos - for it to count as a sale).