Taylor Swift’s Record-Shattering ‘Showgirl’ Debut Revived This 1990s Sales Tactic

In not allowing any songs on Taylor Swift’s blockbuster album The Life of a Showgirl to be downloaded à la carte for the first week of the album’s availability, the Swift camp and Republic Records revived a marketing strategy employed extensively by the major labels back in the 1990s and then selectively deployed again in the 2010s.

Or as one veteran label executive put it when it was pointed out that fans could only buy the complete album on iTunes and Amazon and no individual song downloads: “Wow, that’s very old school — the infamous album-only strategy.”

Down through the years, there have generally been two reasons not to let fans buy individual songs off an album. In the 1990s, the strategy of not issuing CD singles was used by the major labels to spur album sales so that fans would have no choice but to buy the much pricier album. (Back then, in the 1995–1997 era when the strategy was in full swing, CD singles were $3.49 (about $1.92 wholesale), while albums had list prices in the range of $15.98 to $17.98 (respectively $9.60 to $10.80 wholesale).

The other reason not to issue singles and disallow individual song downloads occurred in the 2010s when artists like Garth Brooks, Kid Rock and AC/DC tried to protect the album format because the digital format was shifting the industry from an album-dominated world to a song-dominated one. At that time, iTunes wouldn’t allow the labels to withhold individual song sales from albums, so those artists told their labels not to serve their albums to download stores; and in fact, Brooks went a step further, setting up his own download store, Ghost Tunes, where his albums were available for purchase, but only in their entirety.

Or as another veteran label executive remembers in reaction to the withholding of individual song downloads from sale: “It’s been a long time since we have seen the ‘no song downloads’ strategy deployed. That was a Garth Brooks move. With Garth, it was a creative thing. He wanted his fans to experience his albums as a whole.”

Indeed, sources tell Billboard that Republic Records executives have been quietly telling services and others that the reason behind the no-song-download move is because Swift wanted her fans to experience the entire album. Republic didn’t respond to requests for comment; nor did Amazon or iTunes.

On the other hand, the fact that fans could stream individual songs from Showgirl at digital services tends to discount the stimulus of promoting her music through the album concept — or at the very least suggests instead that buttressing the album’s sales and activity numbers was also a motivating factor.

Regardless of the reason for withholding songs, thanks to the highly successful, multi-tiered effort to market The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor herself, her camp and Republic, the album became the first album to achieve 4 million album consumption units in a week since Luminate’s antecedent company began tracking sales as the basis for the Billboard charts back in the May 25, 1991 issue. In fact, other industry veterans argue it’s probably the biggest week ever in the history of the music industry for an album, although that can’t be proven as industry-wide numbers weren’t available before 1991.

But even if withholding à la carte song downloads to spur album sales was the motive, it was a minor one at that, considering that the album’s 4.002 million album consumption units break out to 3.121 million in physical sales, 358,000 in album download sales, and another 523,000 stream-equivalent albums. Overwhelmingly, the album’s sales success appears to be mainly due to the 37 album variants fielded for the album — not to downplay the music itself as a driver of sales, nor the firepower of the artist and businesswoman behind the music.

Sources say that during Showgirl’s debut week, as sales and consumption units mounted, the Republic and Swift team set their eyes on what industry executives would have previously said was an unsustainable target — a 4-million album consumption unit debut week. Once it became clear that target might be within reach, according to sources, the Republic and Swift team unleashed every tool imaginable — including sale pricing in their quest to break the 4-million mark milestone, something that they did with a little over 2,000 units to spare.

But the question emerges: could they have hit the 4-million unit mark if individual songs were available as downloads? Sure, the strategy of withholding à la carte downloads was a minor one in terms of the album’s overall achievement numbers-wise, but would the album have scored 358,000 album downloads if individual song downloads cannibalized album sales to the tune of 3,000 units? Or would song downloads have been so plentiful that they would have made up the difference in track-equivalent albums? We may never know.

As it is, the 358,000 downloads isn’t the biggest amount of download sales in one week for a Swift album in this decade. Back in 2020, her Folklore album sold 615,000 units — all album downloads — in its first week. However, that was during the height of the pandemic, and some of those were sold from the Taylor Swift store website as part of a bundle, whereby her fans could preorder the physical album and then receive the download while they waited for CDs and vinyl to be manufactured and then shipped to them weeks and even months later.

In its second week, The Life of a Showgirl remains at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Oct. 25), earning 338,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. for the week ending Oct. 16, according to Luminate. That’s a 92% drop from the album’s modern-era record debut. For week two, Republic and Swift made one track available for individual download: “The Fate of Ophelia.” Both iTunes and Amazon priced the song at $1.29, though purchasing it on Amazon is less straightforward. In its first week of availability (Oct. 10–12), the track was downloaded nearly 11,000 times, according to Luminate.

And if you were expecting the rest of the album to open up in week three, think again — as of Monday (Oct. 20), “The Fate of Ophelia” is still the only track available for download.