"The album’s sales were bolstered by its availability across 20 physical variants, all with the same 11 songs."
I fucking hate this. If you have to release more than one just do one regular one, a colored vinyl and a deluxe edition. There is literally no reason to release TWENTY 'different' versions especially if they all have the same fucking content. It's just consumerism for NO reason other than that they know stupid people will buy too many of them (Or ALL of them) and they will get money.
2 of those are CD variants and 2 are cassette variants. 16 is still wildly excessive BUT for a major pop star... I can see it.
I have way more respect for doing limited pressings of different variants (I saw some were less than 5k?) with the same track listing than I do for folks doing the "same thing" with excessive variants with 1/? bonus tracks exclusive to each press. At least in this case, fans can pick the pressing they like the most without FOMO and gimmicks.
see above. They absolutely all drive up FOMO. This is perpetuated by the bot-enabled flippers who wipe out the purchase of limited edition drops to immediately post them on ebay with a 5x markup.
I explained what I was saying kinda poorly. I meant FOMO in the sense that folks aren't missing out on specific tracks or a complete tracklist for whatever edition of the record they pick up. I've been a part of the vinyl scene for a while, so I know how collectors get. I don't mind limited runs in this particular sense because everyone gets to enjoy the media the way it was intended.
If they are just different variants but the same songs I don’t see too much of an issue, but I don’t know what pressure that puts on manufacturers. It’s not like there’s a reason to buy others to get different content or music. As a taylor fan, it really pissed me off how she does variants because there are different songs on different vinyls. I got a version with a bonus track I don’t like. I’m not buying another version of the album, but it is annoying.
Variant collecting is huge though, even if all 10+ versions have the same content but some type of (Even tiny) difference people will get all of them for sure. I know people that have 40+ different versions of the same album that all have identical content but a different logo here or a different catalog number there. Those particular albums are decades old though, not recent.
And what Taylor is doing is even worse, putting different tracks here and there, announcing limited runs or limited colors knowing some of her mindless stans will blindly purchase.
I fucking hate this. If you have to release more than one just do one regular one, a colored vinyl and a deluxe edition. There is literally no reason to release TWENTY 'different' versions especially if they all have the same fucking content. It's just consumerism for NO reason other than that they know stupid people will buy too many of them (Or ALL of them) and they will get money.
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I have way more respect for doing limited pressings of different variants (I saw some were less than 5k?) with the same track listing than I do for folks doing the "same thing" with excessive variants with 1/? bonus tracks exclusive to each press. At least in this case, fans can pick the pressing they like the most without FOMO and gimmicks.
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And what Taylor is doing is even worse, putting different tracks here and there, announcing limited runs or limited colors knowing some of her mindless stans will blindly purchase.
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