Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Taylor Swift Not Allowing Individual Tracks from “Showgirl” to Be Downloaded, to Drive Up Album Sales and Protect the Songs

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I was wondering why no singles from “The Life of a Showgirl” were showing up on iTunes.

Turns out it’s not going to happen.

Swift and her team have made the whole album “album only” on iTunes. You can’t download individual tracks.

This is a good trick to drive up album sales. Why let the album splinter? If you want one song, you have to take all 12.

In the streaming world, it’s a different story. You can stream individual tracks, maybe listen to one and skip the others.

But to own some milk, you gotta buy the cow.

This is not typical of album releases, but it’s very Swiftian. This is why she owns a big estate in Rhode Island, houses in New York and Nashville, and we’re in a rent controlled apartment!

PS It’s the same over at amazon.com. And why is this? Because the SWifties obviously are unsure of a single breaking out. I don’t hear one. Radio may not either. So this way, they hedge their bets.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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