Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 134

looks like it followed rsdbf, exclusive in stores on black friday then online after. vinyl mustve sold out as soon as it dropped on their website. cd is still available.

 

If the packaging for this is awful, people are gonna be pissed. Triple gatefold shit with sturdy individual sleeves is the bare minimum.

 

seems to be the same situation as Red and Speak Now - slightly wider gatefold with printed inner sleeves. not amazing, but definitely better than trying to smush a massive booklet directly into the gatefold (like the standard release).

 

How much is she charging for this? $80 minimum for a 4LP set? Then yeah it better be done right.

 

$60

 

$60

 

That's a better price than I thought, 4LP for $60 isn't bad at all! Still hope it's done right.

 

Considering some single LPs are 40 these days , this is very reasonably priced

 

I wish she had an option to buy the 2nd half standalone though. Blink did that with their new deluxe. She has to know most fans buying this already have the first half on vinyl

 

She would never because of the charts, if she did that it wouldn't count as TTPD sales numbers anymore

 

tried to go to target yesterday but it was gone, obviously sold out online now. i’ll wait and see if there’s a wide release or restock but im not gonna go out of my way for it.

 

IMO, she shouldn't have been allowed to count those initial vinyl sales toward chart performance since it was only half the album.

 

The online page says “not sold in stores” now. This might be gone.

 

That is the album though. The Anthology is basically a day 1 deluxe edition.

 

*whispers* Day 1 deluxe editions shouldn’t be a thing.

 

Honestly I'd much prefer day 1 deluxe editions to a re-release a year later with a handful of new songs.

 

Make Taylor Swift albums 13 songs with 3 Target bonus tracks again

 

I don’t think you should be allowed to have it both ways. Release your album with however many songs you want, but don’t then tack on digital-only stuff just to get the streaming numbers, especially if you are then going to re-release the physical version with all the songs a few months later and try to get your fans to buy it again. Predatory, wasteful, stupid behavior from a fucked industry.

 

If we’re wishing for things, no more Target exclusive anything.

 

I disagree. You should be able to release your record and then put out as many songs as you want as extras for people to listen to or not. I don't see why that's a bad thing at all.

The physical release I can agree with though. I think it should either all be available at the start or there should be an option to just get the extra stuff if you want.

 

An absolutely exhausting continued trend of capitalism and greed.

 

I think it’s a bad thing because it cheapens the album as an art form and because it leads to this kind of noxious capitalist maneuver. If you don’t have the confidence in the songs to put them on your album, don’t put them on your album. Save them for later. Let the focus be on the thing you wanted the focus to be on. I think I’d have received the anthology songs so differently if they came out now, as their own album, than the way she did it. The folklore/evermore approach was far more satisfying to me as a listener than the Tortured Poets/Midnights approach. I’d feel differently if the bonus songs on those albums sounded like clear b-sides, but the anthology songs are a completely different mood than the Tortured Poets songs. It makes no sense to jam them together other than for chart numbers, which I think sucks!

 

i think it's still available through other online storefronts overseas (hers included). they'll absolutely restock it.

 

Yeah I just disagree. I think you can have confidence in the songs and want them to be a part of the same album/cycle while still wanting to release a more traditional album in terms of length and cohesion. Not everyone would want to listen to 31 songs at a time, although it seemed like a lot just forced them selves to anyway, so people can choose whether to listen to the standard and come back later for the rest or go straight for the Anthology.

I guess it just comes down to personal taste because I'm sure a lot of people would have preferred them more spread out but I'm a huge fan of how Taylor has been doing it. I listened to the 3am tracks when they came out and didn't feel like listening to them with Midnights so I didn't. On the other hand when artists release deluxe editions later on with a handful of new songs I usually have very little interest in even checking them out. The Anthology only strengthened my appreciation of TTPD when it came out and I don't think it would have happened the same way if she released the second half now. I think it makes a ton of sense to have them together as one album thematically. There's a ton of overlap in what she's singing about even if it sounds distinct. It's a collection of songs that came from the same period in time and expresses where she was at for that moment.

 

Yeah, I drastically prefer to get more songs later. Spacing things out and giving them more room to breathe is just the better way to go, imo. In the Taylor parlance, the anthology songs never even got an “era” and will mostly be consigned to the dustbin of her catalog, versus evermore which has its own distinct legacy from folklore among fans.

And if she was going to do it this way, I still contend it’s bullshit to release the main album on vinyl, release a shit ton of variants, get your fans to preorder/buy it before they even know there’s another album, and then release a full version which forces fans who want the second album on wax to re-buy the other album again.