How Taylor Swift hacked the business of record sales

For almost a decade, Adele’s “25" has held the record for first-week album sales with nearly 3.5 million. That mark appeared insurmountable until Taylor Swift released “The Life of a Showgirl" on Oct. 3. The pop star blew past Adele’s total in five days, ultimately earning a hair more than 4 million sales.

In 2015, Adele kept her album off streaming services, ensuring that anyone who wanted to hear it that first week would have to buy it. Last week, Swift relied on a different tactic to get to 4 million.

She put out 38 variations of “The Life of a Showgirl," according to Billboard, including CDs, vinyl records, digital downloads and a cassette, some of which featured acoustic versions of certain songs, voice memos and even jewelry. Fans who wanted bonus tunes or knickknacks or just aimed to champion their favorite artist bought multiple copies.

Taylor Swift put out 38 variations of ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ including CDs, vinyl records, digital downloads and a cassette.

“I’ve worked with her and her team many times on new releases; she is one of the best marketers I’ve seen in my lifetime," said Rob Miller, a 35-year veteran of radio who serves as brand manager at WNEW, an adult pop station in New York.

Releasing numerous variations of an album has become increasingly popular as artists aim to give their most ardent fans more ways to support them—while also boosting their first-week totals in a fiercely competitive industry. (Album sales numbers reported by Billboard incorporate streams along with purchases of physical copies and downloads.) When Swift, coming off the highest-grossing tour in history, applies this approach, it’s akin to watching Cal Raleigh in a home-run derby; the result is a foregone conclusion. A representative for the singer did not respond to a request for comment.

The concept of releasing multiple album variants “amped up a lot in recent years," said Adam Abramson, a former major-label sales guru who now runs his own sales and streaming consultancy. The average number of physical variants of top 10 albums leapt from 3.3 in 2019 to 8.9 in 2023, according to Luminate.

Now that streaming is the dominant form of listening, “the most-dedicated fans are often excited by tangible items that let them feel like they own a piece of their favorite artist’s work," said Joey Arbagey, a former major label A & R who is now an executive vice president at 19 Entertainment.

Many of these buyers don’t purchase variants to rush home and play them. In 2023, Luminate found that only 50% of consumers who paid for vinyl over the previous 12 months actually had a record player.

Dan Cash, a Swift fan based in Wiltshire, England, usually buys one of the singer’s records to support her. But this time around, while a little tipsy, the 34-year-old content creator and author went ahead and purchased four of Swift’s CD variants. He doesn’t have a CD player, so last week he was contemplating organizing a giveaway for his TikTok followers.

The album collection of Harrison Smith, a 35-year-old Swiftie who runs a restaurant in Boston. ‘Especially in such a digital world,’ he said, ‘it feels special to be able to unbox a piece of music.’

Sarah Saul, 39-year-old director of communications in Los Angeles, told a similar story. “I typically just buy one CD," she said, but splurged on four because she liked the jewelry that came along with each one, especially a necklace. “I went a little overboard," Saul joked. “They did a really nice job on the packaging."

Artists who want to earn more money and larger first-week sales totals often present fans with a variant bonanza: Last year’s 10 biggest albums, ranked by physical sales, came out in 22 different versions on average. Even though Luminate found that releasing so many variants is overkill—nearly 93% of sales came from the five most popular versions—artists often take a spray-and-pray approach.

The goal is “to have fans making noise and talking on social media about which variant they want—they’re basically promoting these records on behalf of the artist," Abramson said. “That feeds the frenzy, which leads to additional sales, helping the artist’s first-week total and chart position."

Harrison Smith, a 35-year-old Swiftie who runs a restaurant in Boston, enjoys watching “fans open [their purchases] on TikTok and getting excited." “Especially in such a digital world," he said, “it feels special to be able to unbox a piece of music—‘look at the sparkles! Look at the pictures!’"

Releasing numerous variations of an album has become increasingly popular as artists aim to give their most ardent fans more ways to support them.

Another way that artists “feed the frenzy" is by manufacturing scarcity. When the rapper Travis Scott was duking it out with the pop hitmaker Sabrina Carpenter for a No. 1 album last year, he put out six different digital variants in a single day, and she fired back with three of her own. All were available for a limited time only; Carpenter won by less than 1,000 units. Swift released CDs of “The Life of a Showgirl" outfitted with extra acoustic tracks and several digital versions that had acoustic tracks plus voice memos; both were only available for 24 hours.

As releasing a flood of variants has become more common, however, it’s also increasingly drawn backlash in some corners of the internet. Listeners eye roll about artists’ chart-driven agendas or fret about the environmental impact of all those CDs, while rival fandoms accuse each other’s favorite star of gaming the system.

On recent Reddit threads, some fans have questioned the motivation behind all of Swift’s variants and the need for them. Late last week, the star announced that she was releasing the “Deluxe So Punk on the Internet Version" of her album, available for just 6.5 hours. “Gosh I adore her and her music but make it stop," one fan wrote on Instagram. “She has to know it’s all too much."

Swift appears unbothered: As she said in her release-party movie, “in my industry, attention is affection."

Write to Elias Leight at elias.leight@wsj.com