Taylor Swift’s new album, “Reputation”, which was released on November 10th, has been met with critical acclaim. The project, which features fifteen tracks, was not featured on any streaming services. Despite this, “Reputation” still achieved incredible first week numbers, selling 1.2 million copies in the US in its first week. This feat has not gone unnoticed, begging the question, how important is streaming?
It’s important to note the difficulty of going platinum in just one week. Many top-tier pop artists fail to do just this alone. It isn’t surprising that a megastar like Taylor Swift hit these numbers, but the argument not to stream may not be applicable to all artists.
The 1.2 million record “sales” are calculated by the RIAA, using their own specialized algorithm. This formula integrates physical and digital album sales, streaming and various other platforms. Since Swift’s album was not available to stream for the first week, the majority of her sales came from those who purchased the album digitally on sites like iTunes and Google Play.
For many upcoming artists such as Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone, Khalid, and Logic, they rely on streaming to carry their album forward. Lil Uzi, for example, generated over 4.3 million dollars from just the streaming of “XO Tour Llif3” alone. In today’s climate, music labels recognize this, often times using sponsored playlists, like “Rap Caviar” on Spotify, to promote their artists. Since streaming is calculated in album sales, artists like these are able to release projects that eventually go gold or platinum, despite not selling many physical albums.
Swift’s success, however, may show that artists do not need to stream their music.
Taylor Swift originally chose to not stream her music due to the fact that streaming services pay artists at an incredibly low rate. By not streaming her music, Swift forces both casual listeners and die-hard fans to buy her album. In addition, Swift made most tracks on the project “album only” meaning that one must purchase the entire album if they want to own that one song.
By combining these two restrictions Taylor was able to force her fan base into one option, buying the album in its entirety. This strategy, mixed with a well-executed marketing campaign, placed Taylor Swift on a fast track to success.
While it is impressive to see numbers like these, it simply isn’t enough evidence to endorse a streaming-less future of music. Taylor Swift is one of the biggest musicians of the 21st century, making her experience an outlier when compared to others. Only a few superstar artists could accomplish similar success without utilizing streaming.
For Taylor Swift, streaming services solely provide monetary value. For many other musicians, they are a source of exposure.
So don’t expect to see your other favorite artists fall in Taylor’s footsteps.
