Taylor Swift has released the Kraken.
After three weeks, Swift has allowed iTunes to start selling downloads of individual tracks from “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Previously, the album was only available in whole, which drove that initial sale of 4 million albums.
But now that weekly sales have dropped significantly — under 200,000 a week — Swift’s people have realized it’s time to give in.
The result is 7 singles from “Showgirl” have landed in the top 100 today including “The Fate of Ophelia,” which is number 1, and “Opalite” at number 3.
Most of the others are sampled from other songs, like “Father Figure” from George Michael’s original song.
Fans don’t seem to mind that. I don’t know what the original composers think, unless they’ve been quietly paid off.
Meantime, Swift singles take up most of the top spots on Spotify. There are estimates that she’s made $135 million so far off of this album. So she has plenty to pay people like the Jonas Brothers, whose song, “Cool,” she ‘borrowed.’
