Taylor Swift’s newest album, “The Tortured Poets Division,” got here out on April 19, 2024. Per normal, she’s breaking data—and we couldn’t let a significant Taylor second move and not using a little evaluation from us.
Trying on the information, this album is rocketing Swift even increased—at the very least relating to the Billboard charts. Let’s have a look.
First, the context across the “Tortured Poets” launch
For months, Taylor Swift seemed to be dropping hints about releasing “Popularity (Taylor’s Model),” her re-recording of the 2018 album. Right here’s an instance: in February 2024, she modified her “Midnights”-era social media profile image from full-color to black-and-white. She began dressing in darker hues—black, navy, darkish inexperienced, deep browns— paying homage to “Popularity” branding.
Calling out these particulars could sound foolish, particularly when you—like me—aren’t deep within the Swiftie world. However Swift persistently hints at main releases via such tiny particulars. All these hints have been crimson herrings, as TODAY reported. As a substitute, after months of hypothesis, Taylor Swift took to the stage on the 2024 Grammy’s to announce a brand new album, not “Popularity,” referred to as “The Tortured Poets Division.”
“Midnights” revisited—re-analyzing our personal stats, two years later
Again in 2022, when she launched the “Midnights” album, we printed a weblog taking a look at the truth that she had all 10 of the High 10 songs on Billboard Scorching 100. We marveled at how she dominated the charts—and pulled the Grammy-winning album collectively whereas prepping to announce her Eras Tour.
On the time, if we expanded to the High 25, Taylor captured 15 and 13 songs over two weeks. (Shout out to the Domo Variables characteristic that makes it straightforward to change this view to the High 25 as a substitute of the High 10. You possibly can change the view by yourself view under, too.)
Taylor’s most likely damaged lots of of data, however Drake truly had her beat on this one. For one week in 2021 and one other in 2023, Drake held 16 of the High 25 songs.
Nicely, transfer over, Drake. Together with her spring 2024 launch, Taylor captured 19 of the High 25. That’s proper—19. Let’s dig into what’s occurring right here and why.
The streaming period may clarify what’s occurring with Taylor’s information
Curiously (or perhaps not surprisingly), that is most likely associated to streaming and releasing all songs without delay. We stored digging into Swift’s document outcomes, deciding to have a look at how new Swift releases carried out as they entered the charts in prior years.
We regarded on the yr a track first entered the charts (word: our Billboard information doesn’t have a particular album title or launch date). Then we thought of the variety of songs within the High 25 within the first week on the charts—then the 2nd, third, and 4th weeks.
The primary chart reveals the variety of songs within the High 25. The final two years, 2022 and 2023, have been an enormous wow for her. You possibly can see that 15 songs cracked the High 25 in 2022 when “Midnights” got here out. 17 made the listing in 2023, the yr she launched her recordings of “Converse Now (Taylor’s Model)” and “1989 (Taylor’s Model).” After that surge, the quantity goes down.
Our second chart reveals the particular rating of every track. Hover over for the track title or hover over a yr to see the particular rankings. It’s also possible to swap which artist you’re looking at. Let’s hone in on Michael Jackson (you’ll be able to change the filter above). You possibly can see that he by no means obtained probably the most songs in that first week. His work took a bit to construct.
That’s the distinction between streaming and old school document and CD gross sales—as a substitute of instantaneous hits, songs of the previous took time to climb the charts. Artists of in the present day launch an album’s songs suddenly and, in flip, get fast suggestions from followers. Inside hours, somebody like Swift can see which songs have struck a chord (or a nerve) with listeners, which of them are getting much less consideration, and which deep cuts might turn out to be sleeper hits.
We are able to see the same pattern by filtering for Madonna, the unique queen of musical reinvention. Most of her songs took just a few weeks to get traction on the charts.
Placing Taylor Swift’s information right into a customized, Converse Now-purple app
For a bit of enjoyable, we determined to make use of Domo’s new App Studio for this last embed. It’s virtually like constructing your individual app or web site—not only a dashboard. We used App Studio’s customizable themes to set the temper, pulling the purple from Taylor’s costume on “Converse Now’s” album cowl. We even have a second web page with the information explorer we used within the weblog submit method again in 2022 (when App Studio was simply an concept in some engineer’s head).
So, the place will the music trade go from right here? What’s going to the following section of sharing music be? We are able to’t inform simply but—however we’d be keen to guess Taylor will stay entrance and middle.
We created a customized app utilizing App Studio that’s all about Taylor and her music, under. Test it out, and go to our App Studio web page to learn the way this works.
