Taylor Swift Drops New Album on iTunes: Available for Just 10 Hours!

Update 10/10 — The momentum shows no signs of slowing down. Yesterday marked the release of a new “Deluxe So Glamorous Cabaret Version” album, followed by a fifth release titled “So Punk on the Internet Version”. This latest album was only available for just over 6 hours on the American store. Fans, known as swifties, are advised to keep an eye on the star’s social media (and to create a U.S. Apple account) if they hope to secure the complete collection.

Update 09/10 — And the releases keep coming. An exclusive third album, titled The Life of a Showgirl (DELUXE Life Is A Song Acoustic Version), is now available on iTunes for a few more hours. Like its predecessors, it is priced at €6 in France and features several acoustic versions of already iconic Taylor Swift songs. The tracks cannot be purchased individually and are set to disappear by the end of the day—possibly to be replaced by yet another version. Rumors suggest this series of releases could continue for a week.

Update 08/10 — Taylor Swift is making iTunes relevant again, and it’s proving effective. Since last night, the singer has been offering a new surprise album, The Life of a Showgirl (DELUXE Dressing Room Rehearsal Version), a special edition featuring 16 songs, available for sale for only 24 hours. From a marketing perspective, it’s a masterstroke: Life of a Showgirl (DELUXE Dressing Room Rehearsal Version) is leading the sales charts.

Close behind is her most recent standard album, which was released just a few days ago. This highlights the challenging position in which digital record stores find themselves. Despite Taylor Swift’s global fame, this latest record has garnered only 88 reviews.

Original Article — Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has once again broken the internet and streaming platforms. But the American singer has also released a special version: available solely on iTunes (the service), priced at $4.99 ($5.99 in France), and only for 24 hours. The announcement came around 6 PM on October 6th, so don’t delay if you’re a fan of Taylor Swift.

This edition, named The Life of a Showgirl (DELUXE Alone In My Tower Acoustic Version), will delight Swifties with its acoustic renditions of some already beloved tracks. For Swift, it’s a way to earn a bit more revenue: even at €6, the album with its exclusive acoustic versions likely generates more income than streaming does for many of her fans. It’s also a surprising promotion for a service that has seen better days.

The online purchase of music is indeed stuck between physical versions (vinyl, cassette tapes, CDs, etc.) that offer a tangible item and streaming, given that the average price of an album, for which you receive AAC files, is similar to a monthly streaming subscription. At Apple, Apple Music even offers higher quality than what can be obtained on iTunes, an irony indeed.