How is this girl doing it? Why is she breaking all records since she started her music career? Taylor Swift has sold 1.208 million copies of her new ‘Red’ album during its first week of release according to Nielsen SoundScan, and yes, it is the biggest first week sales figure in more than a decade. This is even better than for her 2010 album ‘Speak Now’, which had nevertheless sold more than 1 million copies in its debut week! How does she do that? Especially now, when people are supposedly not buying records anymore! Other artists did it before but times have considerably changed and everyone is either pirating music or using Spotify, thus the Swift phenomenon is quite unusual.
The LA Times is reporting that 465,000 copies were sold on iTunes, which has the exclusive on the digital download for the album, and 396,000 copies of an exclusive 22-track deluxe edition (three bonus songs and three remixes) were sold at Target. However, the album was never sold for less than $9.99 at any retailer, contrarily to other new albums heavily discounted – remember about Lady Gaga's ‘Born This Way’ sold for 99cts at Amazon?
Personally, I haven’t listened to anything else than the single in which she screams in repeat that she is never ever getting back together with Jake Gyllenhaal, and that was enough for me! I know that Iman loves the girl but I simply don’t understand what is the deal with her music, which is not groundbreaking in any way; Taylor is always writing the same song about her ‘exciting’ love life, and I am bored just writing about it! So what is her secret? Is there a team with a savvy marketing strategy behind her? Sure! Does she have a very solid base of fans who are obsessed about her? Certainly! Does she embark in major massive tour? Yes that too! Does she appear in person in all the afternoon and late night talk shows? Of course!
But there's even more, as, ‘Red’ appeared in very unusual locations such as Starbucks, Walgreens – have you been to Walgreen lately? There is a mini Taylor Swift store inside the store – and even Papa John’s Pizza! It turned out that pizza and Taylor Swift were a winning combination because this sold an extra 8,000 CDs for $13. There was even a $22 combo (large pizza with the CD and Taylor’s head on the box). Honestly that says a lot about her music or at least the way she wants her music to be consumed.
But I am not impressed, these are just marketing strategies, nothing else, it doesn’t say anything about her talent. She is the flavor of the moment with her Walgreen-princess-Target-country-queen's fairy tales, and she has quite a moment, that’s true, but her marketing team is just taking advantage of it. So have a slice of that pizza, I’ll pass thank you.