The news that Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl has recorded the biggest sales week for any album ever is an astonishing milestone in the annals of e-commerce. Swift’s fame ensured that the album would be a hit no matter what, but moving more than 3.5 million units in seven days required high-pressure sales techniques more common to mattress retailers than musicians. The feat testifies to one of the strangest aspects of modern music: the way that popularity has become part of the performance.
To understand what Swift achieved, it’s helpful to understand how Adele set the record Swift just broke. When her album 25 sold 3.38 million copies in 2015, the music industry was a different place than it is today. Spotify had come to America just four years earlier, and it was only beginning to qualitatively and quantitatively erode the value of music.
As streaming slowly became the public’s preferred way of listening to records, the medium complicated the traditional definition of success. An album having 100 plays could mean one person played it 100 times, or 100 people played it once. In either case, the artist is making a lot less money than they would from 100 album sales.
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