5 Records Taylor Smashed (and What They Mean for Radio)
This EXTRA Graphs About Songs is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the debut of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
Spotify has released lots of info on the world records Taylor Swift’s latest album drop broke worldwide. It’s Spotify’s most streamed album in any weekly period ever and is the first album to generate over one billion streams in a week.
In today’s follow up to yesterday’s post, let’s quickly examine five U.S. specific records Taylor Swift smashed this week---plus two recommendations for my radio programming friends.
1) Thanks to Taylor, Spotify’s total weekly streaming for its top 200 songs in the U.S. surpass 1 billion streams for the first week ever:
2) “Fortnight” breaks Olivia Rodrigo’s U.S. record for the most streams of an individual track in a single week—and three other Tortured Poets tracks make the Top 10.
3) The Tortured Poets Department’s debut was 51 percent bigger than 2022’s Midnights debut.
4) Of Spotify’s biggest tracks in the U.S. this past week, 18 out of the top 20 are Taylor Swift.
5) For the tracks that were hottest pre-Poets, it’s streaming as usual on Spotify: In rank, last week’s Top 5 songs fell from 14 to 31 chart positions. However, when examining these songs’ actual number of plays this week compared to last week, these hits continued on their same anticipated streaming trajectory as if The Tortured Poets Department never happened. That’s because Swifties and other curious music fans created new listening opportunities to sample her latest. Taylor did not cannibalize any streaming from other big songs.
How should radio programmers interpret these record setting streaming accomplishments? Here are two considerations:
1) Play Fortnight because it’s relevant. Drop it if it doesn’t catch on.
The record-shattering figures for Taylor Swift’s latest release further confirm that she is still the most culturally relevant pop sensation in America. (Such insights are why we media consultants make the big bucks.) Top 40 and current-based Adult Contemporary stations should play “Fortnight” in substantial rotation for that fact alone.
However, as noted in yesterday’s post, the song’s strong debut is all about expectations of Taylor Swift and is not yet a verdict on whether Swifties actually like the song---much less if the far more massive casual pop music fan base grows to like it. If “Fortnight” retains a significant portion of its Spotify plays in coming weeks, that’s a sign Swifties like it and—ultimately—more causal fans are liking it, too. (The song will almost certainly see some drop in streaming in coming weeks because that’s how streaming works.)
So while I wouldn’t wait on callout to play it, I’d be ready to pull it if callout ultimately reveals listeners don’t like it.
2) No matter how much attention Taylor gets, listeners love for all the other hits is unchanged.
The demand for non-Taylor hits hasn’t changed. Radio may only have a limited number of slots---if you play one song more, you have to play something else less.
Streaming doesn’t work that way.
While Swifties pushed Taylor to new streaming records, streaming levels for other new hits such as Hozier’s “Too Sweet” and Sabrina Carpenter "Espresso” keep going along as expected. That’s why you should always ignore the rank number in Spotify’s weekly charts and instead focus on how each song’s raw streaming count has changed from week to week.
Based on those weekly streaming plays, you might want to increase spins for Sabrina Carpenter’s "Espresso.”
Sources for this post:
Spotify Charts: https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/global
Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’ Becomes First Album to Get One Billion Streams on Spotify in a Single Week: https://variety.com/2024/music/news/spotify-taylor-swift-billion-streams-week-album-tortured-poets-1235980864/ :
Taylor Swift’s ‘THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT’ Becomes Spotify’s Most-Streamed Album in One Week: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-04-24/tortured-poets-department-taylor-swift-one-billion-record-streams/
Taylor Swift’s ‘THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT’ Breaks Multiple Spotify Records in Less Than 24 Hours: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-04-19/tortured-poets-department-taylor-swift-library-los-angeles/