people hate record variants but they also want them

is there a lesson there for the rest of us

This post isn’t supposed to be about Taylor Swift, but she, in a sense, started me down this path by releasing four different variants of her new album with a physical-exclusive special bonus track for each one. So there are four songs that will probably take some time to get on streaming (if they ever go onto streaming).

Additionally, if you ordered the “special edition” version of the CDs you got some extra stuff—bookmarks, patches, magnets, and “photo cards,” a K-pop thing that I guess has finally found its way over here.

example

Taylor is not unique in doing this sort of thing—everybody does variants (example), they have for a long time, and artists who have done physical-only track variants in the recent past include Florence + The Machine, Olivia Rodrigo, and (forthcoming) Bleachers. However, I think it’s fair to say that since at least Red Taylor’s been waging a war of various gimmicks to make sure the physical album is not losing ground to streaming where her music is concerned.…