How Taylor Swift's New Album Made History
Michael Epstein
Director of Digital Marketing | Writing about music strategy, tech, & marketing - helping artists, creators, and their teams grow their fanbases and their careers.
Taylor Swift's new album will probably be the biggest album of 2024.
"The Tortured Poets Department" broke streaming + vinyl sales records while making history.
Here's a full breakdown of how she did it:
This article covers the rollout across:
1. The initial announcement
2. The build-up
3. Social media engagement
4. DSPs
5. Out of home
6. Consumption
1) The initial announcement
What better way to announce a new album than when accepting a Grammy?
While accepting the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album at this year’s Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift announced her new album live on air and immediately posted the cover artwork afterward (February 4th).
The announcement gave her a 10-week runway to raise awareness.
2) The runway
On 2/16, Taylor Swift started launching pre-orders for the album on her website along with an exclusive bonus track. The post served as another way to bring people back to the album and drive pre-sales.
One week later, on 2/23, Swift made another pre-order post, this time with a different bonus track available (The Albatross) to continue driving pre-sales.
The same thing happened on 3/3 with bonus song “The Black Dog”.
3) Social media engagement
Despite how massive Taylor Swift’s following on social media is, she surprisingly didn’t post a ton leading up to the album release.
That said, she did engage in multiple ways.
?A few days ahead of the album release, Swift posted a “Timetable” announcing a music video release at 8 pm EST on release day. The announcement helped fuel excitement towards the new project and ensured her fans were tuned into the video release.
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?She partnered with Instagram, highlighting the new project at the top of her profile with a special Threads promotion.
On desktop, there is a big banner at the top of her profile with the album name.
When clicked it directs to her Threads profile.
?Much has been made in recent weeks over Taylor Swift’s music returning to TikTok despite the platform’s dispute with UMG.
TikTok supported the new album in a big way with a custom profile frame that fans can unlock, banners, custom playlists, in-app banners, and more. The custom profile frame had call to actions for fans to follow Taylor Swift’s profile, Taylor Nation, & more.
4) DSPs
a) Spotify - A pop-up library installation at The Grove, Los Angeles that was open to the public for the 3 days leading up to the album release on April 19th and created a ton of social media chatter.
Taylor Swift’s Spotify pre-release strategy also included a pre-save countdown landing page for the album ahead of release that ended up breaking Spotify’s record for most presaves from a countdown page.
b) Apple Music - Swift helped curate playlists based on the “five stages of heartbreak”. Clues about the new album were also hidden in the lyrics to existing songs that fans could discover and incentivize them to listen to the older catalog.
5) Out of home
The week of the album release, massive posters appeared on buildings in different cities with mysterious QR codes - when scanned, these QR codes led to hidden YouTube Shorts on Taylor Swift’s YouTube channel that typed out cryptic letters.
6) Consumption
?At 2am EST, just 2 hours after the initial release of the album, Swift released a deluxe version of the album with 15 additional songs. The additional songs brought the total deluxe album count to 31 songs.
In the age of streaming, longer albums helped tally more streams and ultimately album equivalents.
?Making the lyric videos for the album available on her YouTube channel at 8pm EST Friday night as opposed to 12am EST Friday when the album initially released.
In what was most likely an effort to encourage fans listening on streaming services instead of YouTube, Swift held off on making the music available on her YouTube channel for a full 18 hours.
Net result
The net result is Swift is sold 2.6 million records first week - a staggering number considering the streaming age we’re in.
With the release of this new album, we’re definitely watching history in the making.
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Counseling Psychology
6 个月https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebshB_icl_1wVJHP_aCP4wpC845YWE7kOBHzDZpXqO7YvQ0g/viewform?usp=sf_link Greetings!? Hello!!! I am Bhumika Mistry, currently pursuing my Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Mumbai University.?As part of my MA Sem 4 course,, I have undertaken a dissertation that focuses on studying the "Attachment Styles and Taylor Swift Albums" under the guidance of University Professor Dr Eshita Mandal.? Only participate in this study if you are :? ???Between the ages of 21 to 28. ???Can read and understand English. ???Have been listening toTaylor Swift songs ???Residing in India. The research will be conducted online and your participation in this study is expected to take approximately 10-15 minutes. Participation in this study is completely voluntary. If you decide not to participate there will not be any negative consequences. You may withdraw from participating at any point. The researcher will maintain the confidentiality of the responses and the data will strictly be used for research purposes only. Your participation will be immensely valuable.? Thank you !???? If you have any queries regarding this study, kindly email me at: [email protected]
A étudié à Autodidacte
6 个月Epstein?
Scrappy Senior Designer focused on building bold brand identities.
6 个月The library pop-up was a must-see for my daughter. One of the more unique methods I've seen for promoting an album. ??