In May, Taylor Swift notched her 14 th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with the help of 14 different vinyl versions of The Tortured Poets Department , which sold an astounding 859,000 units in the album’s debut week. She has now stayed atop the Billboard 200 for eight consecutive weeks by rolling out additional variants, proving the pop megastar has mastered the art of giving superfans what they want.
Swift isn’t alone in upping her variant game. Luminate looked at the number of physical variants — defined as distinct UPCs per project — in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart each week since the beginning of 2019 and found that the amount has trended upwards since that year, when the average number of physical variants in the top 10 was 3.3 per week, according to data shared with Billboard.
While that number fell to 2.8 per week in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on release schedules and supply chains — physical album sales also fell, from 73.5 million units in 2019 to 68 million units in 2020 due to a sharp drop in CD sales — the average number of physical variants in the top 10 has increased sharply in the post-pandemic years.
Making albums available in different colors, formats and packages has proven to be a shrewd move for prominent artists aiming for the top of the chart. In 2021, Adele ’s 30 debuted atop the Billboard 200 with a Target-exclusive CD, vinyl exclusives at Amazon and Walmart, and three items sold through her official.
