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And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #228: Taylor Swift v The UK
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 17 October 2014
Taylor Swift released a new song this week exclusively on iTunes. Yay! So far reaching is the world’s love for Swift now, that ‘Out Of The Woods’ has made it into the iTunes charts in at least 85 countries. It’s gone top ten in 56 of those. And currently it’s at number one in 27 of them. Good old Taylor.
But not everyone loves her. Almost everyone. But not everyone everyone. There are some countries in the world where Taylor has failed to even crack the Top 200. Are people in those countries angry at her? Well, in the case of the UK, yes they are. But that’s not why she hasn’t charted over here.
On Monday a press release was sent out by Swift’s US label, Big Machine, announcing that ‘Out Of The Woods’ would be “unlocked” on iTunes “everywhere” the following day. It took a few minutes to work out that “unlocked” just meant released (because why use a recognised word when you can be needlessly mysterious?), and then we all prepared for the incoming storm.
A Taylor Swift single is big news these days, and her previous effort, ‘Shake It Off’, is still showing strong in charts around the world a good two months after its release. It was at number four in the UK singles chart last Sunday, for instance. So Brit fans were sure to lap up this new bit of Swifty goodness.
Which meant that, on Tuesday morning when “iTunes UK” started trending on Twitter, it wasn’t entirely surprising. Still, we’re a curious bunch over here at CMU, so we clicked to see what exactly was going on. But it wasn’t a load of people thanking iTunes for this wonderful gift that had been bestowed upon them. It was, in the main, school children complaining that they had not been able to buy ‘Out Of The Woods’ to listen to on their way to their specified educational institution.
I guess I can understand their annoyance, but it was pretty early in the morning and Taylor’s team back in America wouldn’t even be up yet. Surely the track would be there for UK fans when they got home from school, right? Wrong. While the rest of the world was rolling around on the floor due to the sheer joy of being able to spend actual money on a song by Taylor Swift, her poor British fans were just having to make do with the unmonetised YouTube uploads that emerged, as there’s no official video or stream yet either.
But where was the song? Where was it? Everyone else had it and we wanted it. Luckily, Taylor Swift is a communicative sort and came forth to clear the whole thing up on her Tumblr blog. “To all my wonderful UK fans”, she began, patronisingly. “I realise that you are not yet able to get ‘Out Of The Woods’ due to a new strategy my record label is working on in the UK”.
Huh. So the new strategy for the UK is not allowing fans to buy your music?
“I’ve never been one to hold my music back from any of you so I will be watching closely to see if this is ultimately a better experience for you, the fans”, she added.
Now, Taylor, I’m just going to pick you up on something there. First, “never” is a strong word to use about holding back your music just as you’re holding back your music. Also, do you remember that time you held your last album off Spotify for months and months and months? That kind of felt like you were holding your music back too. Maybe that’s a debate we can have later though, because I really want to know more about this “better experience”.
Swift continued: “My good friend Ed Sheeran utilised the same strategy with ‘One’ in the UK and he seemed very happy with the feedback from his fans”.
Well Taylor, if Ed Sheeran jumped off a cliff, would you do that too? What Swift is referring to is the fact that Ed Sheeran made ‘One’, from his second album ‘x’, available to fans in the US, UK and Ireland as an ‘instant grat’ track – meaning that when they pre-ordered the full album, that song immediately downloaded to their computers.
There are a couple of small differences between Swift and Sheeran’s strategies though. Firstly, ‘One’ was the first single to be released from ‘x’, whereas ‘Out Of The Woods’ is the second to come from Taylor’s long-player. And also, when you pre-order Swift’s new album, ‘1989’, on iTunes in the UK, YOU DON’T GET AN INSTANT DOWNLOAD OF ‘OUT OF THE WOODS’. Seriously, I just pre-ordered the bloody thing to make absolutely sure.
So, basically, when Swift says it’s “the same strategy”, she actually means it’s an almost entirely different one. In other countries – the US or Ireland, say – yeah sure, pay your money for the album ahead of its release later this month and you’ll get the pure joy of ‘Out Of The Woods’ appearing in your iTunes library straight away. Don’t want to pre-order that album? No problem, just buy the song as standalone track. British fans though? Well, you could move to Ireland, I guess.
But maybe we should have faith. Maybe this will turn out to be a better experience for UK fans after all. Perhaps this is an innovative and ground breaking make-em-wait strategy, and Swift reckons that her UK fans, more than any other nationality within her fanbase, will be better at the waiting. I suppose sometimes having to wait makes things all the nicer. Like, sometimes I want a cake. But I can’t have a cake. But all of America seems to be eating loads and loads of cake all the bloody time.
Oh, right. Yeah, now see what’s happened. I’ve gone and made a cheap joke generalising Americans as fat. Is this what you wanted, Taylor Swift? Is it? Your release strategy has made me sizeist. I hope you’re happy.
Ugh. Let’s just watch this video of Swift being interviewed about the song by a ghost:
