Taylor Swift’s claims 13th No. 1 record on ARIA album chart with The Tortured Poets Department

Taylor Swift has added more accolades to her bright career with more success in the Australian music charts. See how Aussie fans have responded to her new album.

It’s Taylor Swift’s lucky day with The Tortured Poets Department claiming her 13th No. 1 record on the ARIA album charts.

The stream queen, who considers 13 to be her lucky number, also landed at No. 1 on the ARIA singles chart with Fortnight (featuring Post Malone), her 12th chart-topping song in Australia.

TTPD featured an epic 31 tracks (13 in reverse!) and 28 of them swept into the top 50, with the exception of The Bolter, The Manuscript and Robin, which landed just outside the main singles chart.

Swift owned the entire top 10 of the singles chart, the first artist ever to do so in Australia.

Taylor Swift has claimed her 13th No. 1 record on the ARIA album charts. Picture: Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

The hefty tracklisting and millions of Aussie Swifties putting all of the songs on repeat for the past week made it inevitable the commanding pop superstar would also break the record for the most streamed album in its first week of release.

But Swift, who has broken streaming records with the release of every one of her nine albums over the past five years, also topped the old school vinyl charts.

The pop billionaire has turned a new generation of music fans into vinyl collectors.

The Tortured Poets Department featured an epic 31 tracks and 28 of them have swept into the top 50. Picture: Supplied

And with six variants to choose from – Swift announced The Bolter and The Albatross versions at her Melbourne and Sydney concerts back in February – TTPD was also the biggest selling vinyl record in its debut week.

While some weeks selling just 2000 albums can get to you to No. 1, Swift’s canny pre-order strategy for the vinyl variants months ahead of their April 19 release put several thousands copies into the Australian market.

The vinyl versions named for their bonus tracks retailed for $64.99 via Swift’s official online store and the “coloured” variants in “Ghosted White” and “Phantom Clear” cost $99 at JB Hifi.

TTPD sold a staggering 800,000 copies on vinyl in just four days in the US.

Taylor Swift has released 31 news songs on her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department. Picture: Instagram

It would be illuminating for fans and the music industry bean counters to introduce an Album Merch chart with Swift a super-seller of T-shirts, hoodies, pyjamas and drink bottles themed for each of her new studio albums and “Taylor’s Version” re-records.

On her Australian store, fans can buy a TTPD grey cardigan for $131, a white T-shirt for $66, a bracelet for $66, necklace for $61 and earrings for $51, with each merchandise item bundled with a digital copy of her record.

HOW SWIFT IS MAKING HER MILLIONS

Taylor Swift claimed a two-year songwriting purple patch was responsible for producing the 31 songs on her new record The Tortured Poets Department.

But her artistic decision to make TTPD a double album also serves as a power marketing flex as artists produce longer albums of more songs in the streaming era to game the charts.

“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past two years and wanted to share it all with you,” she posted as she dropped the extra 15 songs last week.

“And now the story isn’t mine anymore … it’s all yours.”

“Yours” being the millions of Swifties who got to work streaming every single one of those 31 songs which quickly flooded the top songs charts of Spotify and Apple with the official “single” Fortnight at No. 1 everywhere.

Streaming has cut album sales in half over the past six years with playlists replacing the long-player.

And while artists claim they still worship the album as a creative “body of work”, the world’s streaming champions are loading their “records” with more than 20 songs to offset the loss of income from selling LPs.

The “track creep” means more songs translates to more streams which equals more royalties.

Beyonce embraced the trend with her new record Cowboy Carter which has a hefty 27 songs while her previous record Renaissance came in at a tight, quality-controlled 16 tracks. The previous studio album, 2016’s Lemonade had 13 tracks.

Beyonce had 27 songs on her latest album, Cowboy Carter. Picture: John Shearer/Getty Images

American r&b queen SZA, who is currently thrilling Australian audiences on her tour, included 23 songs on her Grammy winning SOS record.

And the recent “two disc” drop We Still Don’t Trust You from rapper Future and producer Metro Boomin’ has an epic 25 songs. It was released just three weeks after their We Don’t Trust You collaborative record which featured 17 tracks.

But the big daddy of the longer album format is American country superstar Morgan Wallen whose One Thing At A Time chart-topper released last year had an attention span-testing collection of 36 songs.

American country singer-songwriter Morgan Wallen had 36 songs on his album. Picture: John Shearer

With songs replacing records as the music industry’s hottest currency, a No. 1 chart debut on the album charts may not have the same cultural prestige as it did in the CD era.

But superfans treat the charts like a sport to game, knowing all they have to do is stream a song for more than 30 seconds for it to count as a play.

Album charts are mostly calculated via single song streams as unit sales – vinyl, CD, cassette and digital downloads – have declined.

So a 31-song Swift record has the potential to chart three times higher than one which only has 10 tracks.

And Swifties, who are well versed in chart calculations, are among the most organised and committed consumers in their quest to get their idol to No. 1 worldwide.

As songs are also included on the most popular playlists, music consumers who may not choose to play a whole record from an artist are still listening to their songs in a more passive fashion.

But every stream counts regardless of whether it’s via a playlist or the artist’s album link.

Originally published as Taylor Swift’s claims 13th No. 1 record on ARIA album chart with The Tortured Poets Department