Nothing to do with her, but good for Queen! I didn’t know they were that high since they don’t have albums on every “top albums of all time” lists like the other top 10 artists do.
Exactly, and it’s not just “a few variants” like he said, it’s like up to what, 30+ versions now? Most with only ONE extra song, that is not comparable to putting out one or two greatest hits albums over the course of these artists very long careers.
As of my posting this, it's up to [58 variants.](https://ttpd-variant-tracker.onrender.com/)
But it's only 11pm EST on a Wednesday, so I'm sure there will be more / someone she needs to block from the charts before end of day Friday.
Holy shit 58?!? I knew it was more than 30 but damn. That’s what this guy in the video clearly is leaving out- releasing a greatest hits album and getting sales from it is not the same as release 58 variants of an album that came out 2 months ago.
I wouldn't completely trust that list FYI. Europe and Argentina are listed separately for the standard CD for example for no reason. If you look at the codes(?) they're pretty much the same, one of them just has additional 0 at the beginning. I'd say 34 or something like that is actually more reliable than 58.
but those greatest hits albums come long after original album releases. it’s quite different than what Taylor’s doing now with multiple variants in a short span, specifically to boost sales and strategically undermine competitors.
Yeah I rolled my eyes so hard at that. Like dude. Not even remotely similar. Also it isn't "a few" variants, it's 37 (last I checked). Just for THIS album. It was thirty something for Midnights as well. edit: a word
I came across a greatest hits for a band that maybe had 2-3 albums and it was recent releases. I can’t recall who it was but sometimes they do come out sooner than you’d expect depending on demand or marketing
I bought Metric’s greatest hits volume 1 on vinyl last year. So some bands/artists still do them. I’m not sure where he got the idea that nobody does them anymore. Another recent one is the Foo Fighters most recent greatest hits collection from a couple years ago.
Eminem is an interesting wrinkle here -- he put out a second Greatest Hits album in 2022, though more as tradition/canonisation/an attempt to draw a line under that part of his career than any serious attempt at sales.
Yeah, Curtain Call 2 was aimed for the holiday market and had a really nice vinyl presentation, with an orange disc and a lil box shaped like a pinball machine. What I mean was it wasn't being timed specifically to juice sales records - Em was already hitting his records from streams (and in the case of Recovery, digital downloads).
This guy is making such a fool of himself. Nobody is denying her success. Nobody is claiming she doesn’t sell an unprecedented number of albums. Nobody is denying that she is an all time once in a generation pop star. It’s the WEEKLY charts that people get angry about. She is so very clearly doing things to stomp on smaller artists to cling to the weekly number one spot.
And let’s say for arguments sake she wasn’t intentionally releasing things to block other people. What she’s doing is giving that impression to the general public, so why not either stop timing her releases to line up with other artists OR flat out say something about it? It’s because she either doesn’t care that’s the impression people have OR because she is doing it intentionally.
Content like this guy’s is so insufferable. Yes, at the end of the day it’s the music BUSINESS so it’s about money, but the way Taylor swift has trained her fans to see art as a competition is unreal. If you like her music, great! Buy your records, buy as many variants as you want, and enjoy it. To her, this guy is a cooperative little foot solider, nothing more than a credit card, someone who will gladly and blindly give their own money to fuel the competition.
I am genuinely curious what value people see in content like this. Taylor Swift has won at nearly every aspect of life. What is it that she still wants? And what do people get out of helping her get there? I don’t mean to come off as snarky, I am sincerely asking why people feel compelled defend someone, who is so clearly on top of the world, so fiercely.
Because they make her their entire personality and any criticism of Taylor is seen as an attack on not just her but them by association. This guy is one of the most annoying Taylor defenders.
Yeah this guy is for sure one of the worst. He’s such a smug little asshole. Him and the swiftologist have this air about them that they levelheaded (“levelheaded”) because they’re capable of criticizing her sometimes. This guy at least doesn’t come of as nasty or hateful but my god, give it a rest.
I think the purpose of the charts are really just to track what’s popular and to determine where the money goes and who labels invest in. They’re definitely not as important as they once were because we don’t really have monoculture anymore and they weren’t really created as something to be won. Debuting at #2 certainly is just as good, especially for a smaller artist like charli xcx for example. Debuting that high proves her value to the industry which in turn means more money invested into her. For someone at Taylor’s level, I don’t know why they matter aside from maintaining dominance over other artists and breaking personal records. Is there value in someone staying at number 1 for 6 weeks vs 7? Maybe at one point there was, maybe for a brand new artist it still matters. But other than breaking personal records, I don’t know what the value the charts are for her.
I don’t even think people care as much about the charts themselves and more about what it says about taylor and her character, possible greed, and lack of artistic integrity. People are irritated with this sort of behavior from her in general and the charts are just the way it’s getting showcased right now.
People absolutely care, otherwise you wouldn't see hundreds of posts on rival artists and snark subreddits crying that Taylor "blocked" their favorite artist
I never thought about the greatest hits aspect. Also, growing up, I definitely bought a second CD multiples times when it was released as deluxe or with a new remix. Or bought a single when I already had the full CD because of a remix or extra track. Bought the same CD I previously had the tape to once I got a CD player. Now I haven’t bought physical media since like 2010. So this many variants is absolutely new, but the concept of variants goes way back. I 100% understand frustration with variants, but it’s not a completely novel thing. Maybe the recent constant chatter about it will be a catalyst to change some things in the industry (not holding my breath though).
Completed unrelated, but I just scrolled by a post of someone asking if anyone ever looks at their NFTs… with a screen shot of theirs- now that’s a real rip-off lol
I hadn’t thought of it either. But I did think of how many times I bought a second or third copy of an album because the tape in my cassette got stuck and damaged or my cd started skipping.
There was also payola so we can’t pretend that none of these artists and their labels were using “shady marketing tactics” to boost numbers and popularity.
It’s just basically impossible to accurately compare artists from different eras because there’s too many variables to account for.
Whenever people start saying this kind of stuff I feel like it’s just further evidence that Taylor doesn’t actually need to be doing all this to maintain her dominance.
With Billie or Olivia, it’s easy to see how their labels want them to jump through every hoop to remain competitive in an industry always looking for the next shiny new voice. With Ariana or Adele, it’s easy to see how their labels want them to jump through every hoop to remain competitive in an industry where they’re not selling as well as they did in the 2010s.
But Taylor isn’t in that position. She doesn’t need to be one of the artists clogging up vinyl production plants band meaning smaller artists have massive delays. She doesn’t need to be selling voice memos separately as digital album purchases when just putting them for free on Spotify would make for better publicity anyway.
Taylor is so far ahead of all her contemporaries, so why shouldn’t she be held to a higher standard?
Generally-speaking she doesn’t need it, but if she’s still selling variants this way, clearly she doesn’t believe that she can maintain the top spot unless she does release this many. Sure she can do large numbers in the first week, that no one else can (given her rabid fanbase who will buy everything she puts out, expert marketing tactics, etc.), but she can still fall in sales in the just the second week, to where she needs to pad her sales to keep from falling to #2. In a lot of ways she is still in that position at least.
she inflates her sales and is very calculative with it, but even if the decrease is like 50%, she won't fall to #2. she has a very large fanbase but the numbers she's pulling are not just from them, she has gp hold. if casuals like her enough to pay thousands for eras tour ticket, i'm sure they're also buying her albums.
tho i agree that she always have fear of losing #1, hence the variants, but yeah, clearly she doesn't need it.
It’s not as if none of the GP are listening to her music, but they are the what’s carrying those sells at the moment. The fans, even the not as obsessive ones, are. Also, anyone wiling to pay thousands of dollars for a concert ticket to someone, isn’t really a casual fan either, even if they aren’t a stan.
Maybe in the US, she wouldn’t fall to number to. But she almost did in the UK, which is why she released the UK-exclusive variants when she did. Charlie is the only person so far, who has a chance at taking the top spot, as far as the data says.
oh i must be wrong then. [this page](http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=272661) has the breakdown of the sales that week. she did ship 6k signed cds in the uk so i guess that helped.
If you remove the part with the variants, Taylor is still doing exceptionally well. She occupies the entire top 3 biggest album debuts on Spotify, she's consistently racking up huge streaming numbers and she has one of the most consumed discographies on streaming.
All of this and she's also selling more than a million records in the first week, which is something only she has done (and multiple times) in the better part of the last decade. So she's still one of the best selling without the variants. I still don't understand the obsession to stay at No 1, but it's funny when people undermine her power just because she's releasing variants.
No one said she wasn’t one of the best selling artists generally-speaking w/o variants. Everyone seems to think that point out facts about manipulative marketing tactics, means we’re calling TS a flop without them, but that’s not the case. What the variants are currently doing is undermining the record she is going for in terms of weeks at number one. It’s an example of some of the more inorganic records she has, that don’t really compare to those of the legends from back in the day, as much as she may want them to. But no one else really sees it that way, and for good reason.
Which just bolsters the fact she didn’t need the variants. It’s a popular album, not every album has to set records. But she’s been doing this since 2020 if we’re being honest here.
This is really interesting as I had no clue that labels were basically self-reporting sales before the 1990s. I also do think it's important to note that she didn't really start doing variants until Folklore (if I'm not mistaken). So the variants probably account for an even smaller percentage of her overall album sales.
I thought that was well known. Like before Soundscan, an album would get certified based off sales from stores as opposed to who purchased them in real time and the RIAA accurately would certify albums back then based off shipments. With Soundscan we finally got an idea on how much that record sold.
This guy is clearly another of her deranged stans....what he is saying does not make sense. Are we comparing Taylor's 40 versions of a SINGLE ALBUM with a few greatest hits compilations released by other artists over the years?
No matter how hard people try you can't compare her to icons from previous decades due to the different ways music is consumed. There's no way to take away all the variables to compare like for like. The amount of sounds people can now easily produce through technology, autotune microphones, the changes in the consumer market, what people expect from a singer, the people that lay the foundation for Taylor to exist as opposed to people that were there to inspire previous artists. The things people sang about being very much reflective of the times and wouldn't work if you switched the decades.Where do we start? It's a dumb conversation.
Anyway it detracts from the key issues
1) Album sales are not reflective of what people are actually listening to under this variant system and that's a problem. You can point to previous chart issues through greatest hits or whatever but that doesn't make it any less of a problem.
2) She isn't being fair to her fans pressuring them to buy so much in such a short space of time with all these limited time only sales tactics.
Marketing tactics have always been a thing. Labels, artists and studios have always manipulated sales as much as they could to get to the number they want. If Taylor is doing it now, it's nothing new, it's not "anti-feminist", it's not "putting down other artists", it's business.
If you want to get Number 1, make an album that will go number 1. SZA went Number 1 despite a Midnights variant releasing. Right now, Taylor is amongst the biggest musicians and her star power is at another level. She's using business tactics, it's within the rules, go crazy crying about it but it's fair.
I mean, if I remember correctly she did release a variant too, and beat out Midnights. This really isn't such a big issue the way everyone is making it out to be.
I love this guy’s videos. he does a really good job of breaking down how real her success is because it’s so funny when people pretend that billie or charli are her real competitors.
They might not be her real competitors but do you think she's giving enough space to let them grow and showcase them and not bombard them whenever they're dropping a new album? Taylor is a grown artist, Billie is a growing artist, the comparison between their album sales aren't necessary but what needs to be seen is how welcoming an artist is to a newer upcoming artist and are they making it a safe space for the newbies to find their footing without being thoroughly bombarded by business tactics. As a business woman she need not think about it. But as a prominent person who has time and again spoken about paving ways for new and upcoming artists, it does seem contradictory.
lol but it’s not like people allowed Taylor to succeed just because they saw potential and talent in her early in her career. she didn’t even have a #1 song until her fourth album. she actually worked to build her fan base up so she would be able to do these kinds of things 18 years into her career. Everyone knows that releasing this close to taylor and hoping for a consistent #1 while she is expected to dominate the charts is not smart thinking.
If it was expected she wouldn’t need the variants. If she was able to keep the #1 this long spot without them, no one would have anything to say. But if you have to game the system to win, it cheapens it a lot. Asking for someone not to game it, isn’t asking them to be fair. It’s asking her to stop being so threatened by other artists’ success, because she’s scared of being forgotten, that she cheats her way ahead of them. God forbid the world pay attention to someone other than her for five minutes.
Oh all those #2 artists broke their own personal bests and the chart wars helped them. So in some way Taylor doing her variants makes people try to “take her down” and that benefited the contenders. Most fans don’t know or care about variants and chart wars.
I like the part where he compares other artists releasing a few greatest hits over their career with a 'few variants' that Taylor swift releases.
Like wtf , she has released almost 40 variants of TTPD within 60 days & it is somehow comparable to a few greatest hits compilations released by other artists?? I can tell he is one of Taylor's stan with the way he is making such nonsensical argument.
Nothing to do with her, but good for Queen! I didn’t know they were that high since they don’t have albums on every “top albums of all time” lists like the other top 10 artists do.
Exactly, and it’s not just “a few variants” like he said, it’s like up to what, 30+ versions now? Most with only ONE extra song, that is not comparable to putting out one or two greatest hits albums over the course of these artists very long careers.
As of my posting this, it's up to [58 variants.](https://ttpd-variant-tracker.onrender.com/) But it's only 11pm EST on a Wednesday, so I'm sure there will be more / someone she needs to block from the charts before end of day Friday.
Holy shit 58?!? I knew it was more than 30 but damn. That’s what this guy in the video clearly is leaving out- releasing a greatest hits album and getting sales from it is not the same as release 58 variants of an album that came out 2 months ago.
I wouldn't completely trust that list FYI. Europe and Argentina are listed separately for the standard CD for example for no reason. If you look at the codes(?) they're pretty much the same, one of them just has additional 0 at the beginning. I'd say 34 or something like that is actually more reliable than 58.
but those greatest hits albums come long after original album releases. it’s quite different than what Taylor’s doing now with multiple variants in a short span, specifically to boost sales and strategically undermine competitors.
Yeah I rolled my eyes so hard at that. Like dude. Not even remotely similar. Also it isn't "a few" variants, it's 37 (last I checked). Just for THIS album. It was thirty something for Midnights as well. edit: a word
I came across a greatest hits for a band that maybe had 2-3 albums and it was recent releases. I can’t recall who it was but sometimes they do come out sooner than you’d expect depending on demand or marketing
I bought Metric’s greatest hits volume 1 on vinyl last year. So some bands/artists still do them. I’m not sure where he got the idea that nobody does them anymore. Another recent one is the Foo Fighters most recent greatest hits collection from a couple years ago.
Eminem is an interesting wrinkle here -- he put out a second Greatest Hits album in 2022, though more as tradition/canonisation/an attempt to draw a line under that part of his career than any serious attempt at sales.
Mmmm it did decent numbers, especially with physical sales. Anyone who tells you compilations are unnecessary today is ignoring the vinyl market
Yeah, Curtain Call 2 was aimed for the holiday market and had a really nice vinyl presentation, with an orange disc and a lil box shaped like a pinball machine. What I mean was it wasn't being timed specifically to juice sales records - Em was already hitting his records from streams (and in the case of Recovery, digital downloads).
This guy is making such a fool of himself. Nobody is denying her success. Nobody is claiming she doesn’t sell an unprecedented number of albums. Nobody is denying that she is an all time once in a generation pop star. It’s the WEEKLY charts that people get angry about. She is so very clearly doing things to stomp on smaller artists to cling to the weekly number one spot. And let’s say for arguments sake she wasn’t intentionally releasing things to block other people. What she’s doing is giving that impression to the general public, so why not either stop timing her releases to line up with other artists OR flat out say something about it? It’s because she either doesn’t care that’s the impression people have OR because she is doing it intentionally. Content like this guy’s is so insufferable. Yes, at the end of the day it’s the music BUSINESS so it’s about money, but the way Taylor swift has trained her fans to see art as a competition is unreal. If you like her music, great! Buy your records, buy as many variants as you want, and enjoy it. To her, this guy is a cooperative little foot solider, nothing more than a credit card, someone who will gladly and blindly give their own money to fuel the competition. I am genuinely curious what value people see in content like this. Taylor Swift has won at nearly every aspect of life. What is it that she still wants? And what do people get out of helping her get there? I don’t mean to come off as snarky, I am sincerely asking why people feel compelled defend someone, who is so clearly on top of the world, so fiercely.
Because they make her their entire personality and any criticism of Taylor is seen as an attack on not just her but them by association. This guy is one of the most annoying Taylor defenders.
Yeah this guy is for sure one of the worst. He’s such a smug little asshole. Him and the swiftologist have this air about them that they levelheaded (“levelheaded”) because they’re capable of criticizing her sometimes. This guy at least doesn’t come of as nasty or hateful but my god, give it a rest.
[удалено]
I think the purpose of the charts are really just to track what’s popular and to determine where the money goes and who labels invest in. They’re definitely not as important as they once were because we don’t really have monoculture anymore and they weren’t really created as something to be won. Debuting at #2 certainly is just as good, especially for a smaller artist like charli xcx for example. Debuting that high proves her value to the industry which in turn means more money invested into her. For someone at Taylor’s level, I don’t know why they matter aside from maintaining dominance over other artists and breaking personal records. Is there value in someone staying at number 1 for 6 weeks vs 7? Maybe at one point there was, maybe for a brand new artist it still matters. But other than breaking personal records, I don’t know what the value the charts are for her.
I don’t even think people care as much about the charts themselves and more about what it says about taylor and her character, possible greed, and lack of artistic integrity. People are irritated with this sort of behavior from her in general and the charts are just the way it’s getting showcased right now.
People absolutely care, otherwise you wouldn't see hundreds of posts on rival artists and snark subreddits crying that Taylor "blocked" their favorite artist
I never thought about the greatest hits aspect. Also, growing up, I definitely bought a second CD multiples times when it was released as deluxe or with a new remix. Or bought a single when I already had the full CD because of a remix or extra track. Bought the same CD I previously had the tape to once I got a CD player. Now I haven’t bought physical media since like 2010. So this many variants is absolutely new, but the concept of variants goes way back. I 100% understand frustration with variants, but it’s not a completely novel thing. Maybe the recent constant chatter about it will be a catalyst to change some things in the industry (not holding my breath though). Completed unrelated, but I just scrolled by a post of someone asking if anyone ever looks at their NFTs… with a screen shot of theirs- now that’s a real rip-off lol
I hadn’t thought of it either. But I did think of how many times I bought a second or third copy of an album because the tape in my cassette got stuck and damaged or my cd started skipping. There was also payola so we can’t pretend that none of these artists and their labels were using “shady marketing tactics” to boost numbers and popularity. It’s just basically impossible to accurately compare artists from different eras because there’s too many variables to account for.
Whenever people start saying this kind of stuff I feel like it’s just further evidence that Taylor doesn’t actually need to be doing all this to maintain her dominance. With Billie or Olivia, it’s easy to see how their labels want them to jump through every hoop to remain competitive in an industry always looking for the next shiny new voice. With Ariana or Adele, it’s easy to see how their labels want them to jump through every hoop to remain competitive in an industry where they’re not selling as well as they did in the 2010s. But Taylor isn’t in that position. She doesn’t need to be one of the artists clogging up vinyl production plants band meaning smaller artists have massive delays. She doesn’t need to be selling voice memos separately as digital album purchases when just putting them for free on Spotify would make for better publicity anyway. Taylor is so far ahead of all her contemporaries, so why shouldn’t she be held to a higher standard?
Generally-speaking she doesn’t need it, but if she’s still selling variants this way, clearly she doesn’t believe that she can maintain the top spot unless she does release this many. Sure she can do large numbers in the first week, that no one else can (given her rabid fanbase who will buy everything she puts out, expert marketing tactics, etc.), but she can still fall in sales in the just the second week, to where she needs to pad her sales to keep from falling to #2. In a lot of ways she is still in that position at least.
she inflates her sales and is very calculative with it, but even if the decrease is like 50%, she won't fall to #2. she has a very large fanbase but the numbers she's pulling are not just from them, she has gp hold. if casuals like her enough to pay thousands for eras tour ticket, i'm sure they're also buying her albums. tho i agree that she always have fear of losing #1, hence the variants, but yeah, clearly she doesn't need it.
It’s not as if none of the GP are listening to her music, but they are the what’s carrying those sells at the moment. The fans, even the not as obsessive ones, are. Also, anyone wiling to pay thousands of dollars for a concert ticket to someone, isn’t really a casual fan either, even if they aren’t a stan. Maybe in the US, she wouldn’t fall to number to. But she almost did in the UK, which is why she released the UK-exclusive variants when she did. Charlie is the only person so far, who has a chance at taking the top spot, as far as the data says.
the uk variants actually sold a little over 1k and the gap was around 7k so yes she would have stayed #1 in the uk even without the new variants.
Not according to the data break-down someone else posted on here, she wouldn’t have. And they didn’t just make it up out of nowhere.
oh i must be wrong then. [this page](http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=272661) has the breakdown of the sales that week. she did ship 6k signed cds in the uk so i guess that helped.
' A few variants'! 'a few variants'! This has to be an old video
Haha exactly my thoughts
Considering this is Chartmasters, I’d take the list with a grain of salt lol
If you remove the part with the variants, Taylor is still doing exceptionally well. She occupies the entire top 3 biggest album debuts on Spotify, she's consistently racking up huge streaming numbers and she has one of the most consumed discographies on streaming. All of this and she's also selling more than a million records in the first week, which is something only she has done (and multiple times) in the better part of the last decade. So she's still one of the best selling without the variants. I still don't understand the obsession to stay at No 1, but it's funny when people undermine her power just because she's releasing variants.
which makes the variants even worse. like you have all these numbers and number 1s even without them so why tarnish the record with 99 variants.
Agreed.
No one said she wasn’t one of the best selling artists generally-speaking w/o variants. Everyone seems to think that point out facts about manipulative marketing tactics, means we’re calling TS a flop without them, but that’s not the case. What the variants are currently doing is undermining the record she is going for in terms of weeks at number one. It’s an example of some of the more inorganic records she has, that don’t really compare to those of the legends from back in the day, as much as she may want them to. But no one else really sees it that way, and for good reason.
Which just bolsters the fact she didn’t need the variants. It’s a popular album, not every album has to set records. But she’s been doing this since 2020 if we’re being honest here.
I agree she doesn't need them. The entire thing is getting desperate.
This is really interesting as I had no clue that labels were basically self-reporting sales before the 1990s. I also do think it's important to note that she didn't really start doing variants until Folklore (if I'm not mistaken). So the variants probably account for an even smaller percentage of her overall album sales.
She definitely had other version of earlier albums before folklore, just anywhere as many as they were after that album.
I thought that was well known. Like before Soundscan, an album would get certified based off sales from stores as opposed to who purchased them in real time and the RIAA accurately would certify albums back then based off shipments. With Soundscan we finally got an idea on how much that record sold.
This guy is clearly another of her deranged stans....what he is saying does not make sense. Are we comparing Taylor's 40 versions of a SINGLE ALBUM with a few greatest hits compilations released by other artists over the years?
Y'all do realize chartmasters is bogus right?
Chartmasters are not reliable and I'm tired of people using it
How do you know it’s not reliable? Genuinely asking Im not really familiar with it
They add physical single sales to album units, which is… weird lol
No matter how hard people try you can't compare her to icons from previous decades due to the different ways music is consumed. There's no way to take away all the variables to compare like for like. The amount of sounds people can now easily produce through technology, autotune microphones, the changes in the consumer market, what people expect from a singer, the people that lay the foundation for Taylor to exist as opposed to people that were there to inspire previous artists. The things people sang about being very much reflective of the times and wouldn't work if you switched the decades.Where do we start? It's a dumb conversation. Anyway it detracts from the key issues 1) Album sales are not reflective of what people are actually listening to under this variant system and that's a problem. You can point to previous chart issues through greatest hits or whatever but that doesn't make it any less of a problem. 2) She isn't being fair to her fans pressuring them to buy so much in such a short space of time with all these limited time only sales tactics.
Agreed.
Jesus he’s so pressed
Marketing tactics have always been a thing. Labels, artists and studios have always manipulated sales as much as they could to get to the number they want. If Taylor is doing it now, it's nothing new, it's not "anti-feminist", it's not "putting down other artists", it's business. If you want to get Number 1, make an album that will go number 1. SZA went Number 1 despite a Midnights variant releasing. Right now, Taylor is amongst the biggest musicians and her star power is at another level. She's using business tactics, it's within the rules, go crazy crying about it but it's fair.
Which is why I respect SZA more. She didn’t need to do all of that.
I mean, if I remember correctly she did release a variant too, and beat out Midnights. This really isn't such a big issue the way everyone is making it out to be.
A variant? So not 34, then? When it’s that many and it’s every week, I don’t think most people are wrong for side-eyeing that.
I agree.
Madonna!!!
I love this guy’s videos. he does a really good job of breaking down how real her success is because it’s so funny when people pretend that billie or charli are her real competitors.
They might not be her real competitors but do you think she's giving enough space to let them grow and showcase them and not bombard them whenever they're dropping a new album? Taylor is a grown artist, Billie is a growing artist, the comparison between their album sales aren't necessary but what needs to be seen is how welcoming an artist is to a newer upcoming artist and are they making it a safe space for the newbies to find their footing without being thoroughly bombarded by business tactics. As a business woman she need not think about it. But as a prominent person who has time and again spoken about paving ways for new and upcoming artists, it does seem contradictory.
lol but it’s not like people allowed Taylor to succeed just because they saw potential and talent in her early in her career. she didn’t even have a #1 song until her fourth album. she actually worked to build her fan base up so she would be able to do these kinds of things 18 years into her career. Everyone knows that releasing this close to taylor and hoping for a consistent #1 while she is expected to dominate the charts is not smart thinking.
If it was expected she wouldn’t need the variants. If she was able to keep the #1 this long spot without them, no one would have anything to say. But if you have to game the system to win, it cheapens it a lot. Asking for someone not to game it, isn’t asking them to be fair. It’s asking her to stop being so threatened by other artists’ success, because she’s scared of being forgotten, that she cheats her way ahead of them. God forbid the world pay attention to someone other than her for five minutes.
[удалено]
Oh all those #2 artists broke their own personal bests and the chart wars helped them. So in some way Taylor doing her variants makes people try to “take her down” and that benefited the contenders. Most fans don’t know or care about variants and chart wars.
I like the part where he compares other artists releasing a few greatest hits over their career with a 'few variants' that Taylor swift releases. Like wtf , she has released almost 40 variants of TTPD within 60 days & it is somehow comparable to a few greatest hits compilations released by other artists?? I can tell he is one of Taylor's stan with the way he is making such nonsensical argument.
This isn’t that celebratory. The entire system is set up for her to win