Taylor Swift breaks multiple records with 'Midnights'

Photo Courtesy: Taylor Swift Wiki

While Taylor Swift has a solid fan base, and more than a few record-breaking releases under her belt, her latest album seems to exceed even her most cutting critics’ expectations. Midnights, Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, was released on October 21st, and has already broken sales and streaming records.

Midnights is Taylor Swift’s first original work since 2020, when she surprise-dropped Folklore and Evermore, her most critically acclaimed albums. With Midnights, Taylor Swift makes her return to pop, after the lockdown-inspired folk sounds on Folklore and Evermore. Midnights also sees her return to writing about her own experiences, and tells the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout her life.

On Spotify, Midnights broke the record for most streams in a single day, with 184.6 million streams. “Snow on the Beach”, her collaboration with Lana del Rey, broke yet another record, for most streams in a single week (57.484 million) for an all-female collaboration in Spotify history. Overall, the first day of release earned Swift the title of most streamed artist ever in 24 hours on Spotify. 

Midnights has also taken over Apple Music, becoming the biggest album ever released globally in Spatial Audio on Apple Music. It set the record for biggest pop album ever released on Apple Music by first-day streams.

In the first six days since its release, the album registered over 486 million on-demand official streams, according to data by Luminate, cited by Billboard. Midnights is now the third most streamed album in a single week ever, behind Drake’s Scorpion (745.92 million) and Certified Lover Boy (743.67 million), respectively. 

The immense success of Midnights can be largely attributed to Taylor Swift’s marketing strategy. She is known for leaving clues that lead fans to speculate and come up with numerous theories. Before the album release, she released a series of TikTok videos, revealing the album’s track titles one by one. The videos garnered over 74 million views, as fans were trying to discover any hidden messages in the announcements. To promote physical sales, she announced four different vinyl editions that form a clock when put together, incentivizing fans to purchase all four editions.