Amid all the hubbub around the various streaming services’ activations around Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Lover’ it shouldn’t be forgotten that she’s one of the artists still capable of shifting a LOT of album sales.
Variety has the scoop on how ‘Lover’ is doing, courtesy of a chat with Republic Records’ Monte Lipman. “The anticipation of this album is extraordinary, with pre-sales quickly approaching one million copies globally,” said Lipman.
As the article makes clear, the sales performance of ‘Lover’ will be scrutinised to see how it compares to Swift’s last album, 2017’s ‘Reputation’, which sold a million copies in its first week in the US alone. But even if ‘Lover’ falls short of that feat (remember, Lipman’s figure is global, but only covers pre-sales) it won’t be a disgrace – especially if, as expected, ‘Lover’ does huge business on the various streaming platforms. We’ll be watching out for their metrics early next week.
In other news, there’s a barrage of overnight headlines about Swift’s plans to re-record her earlier albums as part of the fallout from label Big Machine’s acquisition by her nemesis Scooter Braun. The detail is a bit thin though: those headlines were purely driven by Swift saying “absolutely” in answer to a TV-interview question about whether she has plans to re-record her back catalogue to create new master recordings that she controls. Industry experts are already picking over the question of how Swift would do that (or even if she’s contractually barred from doing so) though.
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