Why this Taylor Swift fan bought 15 copies of the superstar’s new album

Australia’s biggest Taylor Swift fans aren’t surprised the pop superstar’s new album has smashed a number of chart records, including sweeping the Billboard top 10 and selling an eye-watering amount of vinyl copies. But if, like local Swiftie Morgan De La Rue, you ordered 15 physical versions of the album in one week, why would you be?

“She makes it very easy to get sucked in, and you want everything,” the 29-year-old from Dandenong says.

Morgan De La Rue has bought 15 copies of Taylor Swift’s new record Midnights.Credit: Joe Armao

Swift’s new album, Midnights, sold more than half a million vinyl copies worldwide in its first of week of release, including 10,000 in Australia, making it the biggest first week of sales since Luminate started counting modern vinyl sales in 1991.

A stroke of marketing genius has turned Swift’s albums into collector’s items. Four of the five different album covers fit together to form a clock face, while another comes with bonus tracks, making buying different versions of the album a necessity for fans. And some diehards admit they’ve purchased the vinyl versions without even owning a record player.

“I owned a Taylor Swift record before I owned a record player,” De La Rue said. “If she tells you that you’re going to build a clock, you will pay an extra $70 to build the mechanism and turn it into a clock. And then if they’re on the wall, you need a set of copies to listen to.”

Morgan De La Rue owns dozens of Taylor Swift albums, saying she sees everything of Swift’s as ‘collectable’. Credit: Joe Armao

Swift fandom has also found its way onto university campuses, including the University of Melbourne which launched its first society for Swifties this year. The members of the club have watched her documentary in lecture halls, listened to album launches, and baked cookies together.

“Some of my best friends from uni, outside my college, are from the Taylor Swift Club,” said 18-year-old Lauren Dressler, the club treasurer, who is awaiting four Midnights vinyls to arrive. She is also yet to buy a record player.

Record store owners like Chris Crouch, of Happy Valley in Collingwood, say many fans have bought all five album variants, a trend becoming more common amid a resurgence in vinyl in the past decade.

“Everyone has the same song in their pocket on Spotify,” Crouch said. “But if you are a fan, you can have different versions.”

The vinyls set fans back more than $300 for a complete set, but Crouch observes some limited Swift vinyls sold during the annual worldwide Record Store Day now fetch much larger sums. He recalls two customers on Record Store Day lining up with camping chairs outside the store the night before to snag copies of Swift’s The Lakes.

“It was like Beatlemania,” Crouch said. “Now most artists’ new releases have different coloured limited vinyl variants, not just black, and each time there’s the same demand, we sell out. It’s more the scarcity of it.”

Australian music industry veteran Michael Parisi, who runs Right Hand Management and observes global music trends, says Swift is responsible for her own record-breaking success.

“It’s more than just this record, it’s the machine behind it and in this case, the machine is Taylor Swift,” Parisi says. “She started very young and her audience has grown up with her, but she’s also cross-generational.” She has kept pace with technology and kept herself relevant, he says.

Swift this week was occupying a record-breaking nine of the top 10 spots on the ARIA singles chart, while four of her albums were sitting inside the top 20: Midnights, 1989, Lover and Folklore.

Midnights became the most streamed album in a week in Australian Recording Industry Association history and globally surpassed a billion streams in just days. The album debuted on top of the charts in 16 countries.

In the United States, Swift is now the only artist in history to debut a song, and an album in top spot on four separate occasions. Only Barbra Streisand has the same number of chart-topping Billboard 200 albums as Swift, 11.

Swift has now cracked 40 top 10 songs and only trails Drake (59) for the most Billboard Hot 100 top 10 tracks. This week’s success takes her past Madonna (38), the Beatles (34), Rihanna (31) and Michael Jackson (30).

“She was a genuine country star, who conquered the country world and she’s evolved,” Parisi said. “Now she’s conquered the pop world.

“She’s worked with some of the world’s best, strongest and hippest producers, and she keeps re-inventing not just her look but her sound. On top of all that, is her marketing genius.

“It always feels like Taylor Swift is a step ahead of the game.”

De La Rue says Swift, who she has met twice and seen perform in Australia 15 times, has always enticed fans to collect her memorabilia, firstly using subtle Roman numerals on early T-shirts designs that encouraged De La Rue to snag as many as she could. Then it was birthday cards, trading cards, and shoes.

“Everything she’s ever done has been collectable,” De Le Rue said. “I couldn’t imagine going out and buying another album eight or 10 times for any other artists.”

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