As the Kansas City Chiefs look to get back to .500 after a dispiriting loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 5 that sank the defending AFC champions’ record to 2-3, future Hall of Fame Travis Kelce has been busy â signing compact discs.
Though he is reportedly the subject of at least one song on his fiancé Taylor Swift’s new album Life of a Showgirl, Kelce otherwise had nothing to do with creating the music it contains.
And yet, on Saturday, The Swift Society â a fan account with more than 760,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), reported that fans have been receiving copies of the new CD with Kelce’s autograph.
Swift Breaks Sales Record â Sort Of
Exactly how many CDs Kelce, along with Swift, has signed was no more clear than why Kelce had affixed his signature to the inserts on the physical copies of the Showgirl album in the first place.
The new Swift album continues to break sales records in its first week of release, most recently becoming the bestselling first-week album since 1991 when sales were first tracked electronically, according to Billboard Magazine.
The Showgirl album, according to Billboard, sold 3.4 million physical copies since its release on October 3, with totals that include streams and individual track sales still being compiled. But that 3.4 million figure broke a 10-year-old record held by the British pop star Adele with her 2015 release 25, which came in at 3.378 million copies sold in its first week.
But according to British entertainment industry insider Rob Shuter, Adele herself and other pop stars aren’t lining up to congratulate Swift, instead accusing her of “gaming the system” in the tactics she employed to sell her album.
Adele Said to be ‘Livid’ at Swift
What do they mean by that? Specifically, the stars are referring to “Taylorâs surprise decision to slash the price of The Life of a Showgirl to just $4.99 on iTunes,” Shuter reported. Swift’s discount pricing of her album has left Adele âquietly livid,â feeling that Swift has used unfair tactics to break her sales record. Other music stars are also described as “furious” at Swift, according to Shuter.
âAdele believes records should be earned, not discounted,â Shuter quoted a source as saying. âShe worked for those numbers â Taylorâs just buying them.â
Adele’s 25 album was not released on streaming services until seven months after its release on CD and other physical media â though the music was illegally leaked online much earlier.
âItâs a cheap trick â literally,â a music executive told Shuter, according to the journalist’s newsletter. âTaylorâs gaming the system. Everyone knows it.â
Multiple Variants Also Boost Sales
A recording artist Shuter identified only as one of Swift’s fellow Grammy Award winners added, âIf we all dropped our albums to five bucks, weâd all go platinum.”
On other hand, another industry insider told Shuter, âTaylor plays to win â and right now, no one can stop her.â
Swift also released more than 30 “variants” of Showgirl, that is, editions of the album with different artwork, text, additional tracks or other variations.
The strategy is designed to give fans an incentive to purchase multiple copies of what is essentially the same album.
“While the strategy undeniably works, it also raises a quieter, thornier question: why are we applauding business tactics that create more plastic, more shipping, and more waste â as if thatâs a marker of artistic worth?” wrote Maggie Clancy of the SheKnows women’s news and entertainment site.
But when Adele released 25, she did not release variants and did not discount the retail price of the album.
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