LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MAY 01: Taylor Swift arrives at the ‘2019 Billboard Music Awards’ at the MGM Grand … [+]
Taylor Swift delivered perhaps the biggest surprise of 2020 in the music industry when she announced her new album. Folklore just one day in advance. While other superstars have used the surprise strategy before, their performance was completely different from anything the former country star had done before, and her fans have responded by streaming the 16 songs that appear on the set non-stop since they were released on first time less than a week ago.
While it’s only been a few days since Folklore arrived, the set is outperforming the previous set of Swift Lover, and although no singles were promoted before the full version dropped, several of the cutbacks amassed larger streaming sums when they first appeared than any of the heavily publicized singles from their latest project.
When Swift kicked her Lover was with the upbeat single “Me!” Last spring, it was a massive moment in the music industry. The song debuted at No. 1 on the Spotify charts in the United States with 3.578 million views. That’s a very healthy sum, but three tracks of Folklore They did even better on their first day, including “The 1,” which is first on set, and thus won the most plays, at least when fans first started listening. That song also opened at number 1 on the list of most-played songs in the United States, only it topped “Me!” for almost exactly 600,000 currents.
Second Lover The single “You Need To Calm Down” was released with 2.46 million Spotify streams on its first day last summer. In comparison, nine Folklore songs that marked last Friday.
The third Lover Launch, their title track, performed the worst of all singles, as it started with just 1.85 million streams the day fans were able to hit play on that song (August 16, 2019). All but one of the songs featured on Folklore it amassed more streams upon arrival late last week.
What all this means is that with almost no proper promotion and with very little warning, many of the songs featured on Swift’s new album have performed better on Spotify than the singles on her latest album, despite the fact that Lover the cuts were supported by advertising campaigns and a wave of media.
There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon, but the simplest seems to be that fans were so excited about Folklore they were quick to air it … and keep coming back for more, as there is clearly a sizable audience enjoying what they are hearing.
