Taylor Swift’s ’1989′ becomes the first platinum album of the year

January 9, 2001. This will always be an important date in the music industry. This was the date where iTunes was launched and it turned the supply chain of recorded music upside down. In terms of operations, there was virtually no inventory, there were no transportation or packaging costs, just a small percentage of the earnings went to iTunes. Traditionally online purchases were hard for the consumer to make since customers had to go to a website on a browser, they entered their banking information every time, and then figured out a way to transfer purchases to the software they used to listen to music on your computer or your mp3 player. After iTunes, all the consumer had to do was hit one button and every purchase would show up in one software and would sync up with apple’s iPod. Going out and buying physical CDs just didn’t make any sense anymore.

Laura mentions, in her blog, that Taylor Swift’s new physical album shares the point of difference of exclusivity. I would argue that it isn’t just Taylor Swift’s new album that has resulted in this point of difference. Through the past two years, various socio economic factors have contributed. People’s values have started to change. At the start of this movement, consumers of the older demographic started to buy physical copies because they associated buying physical copies with their youth. Nowadays, this has trickled down to the younger dynamic.

People want to have a physical copy of their favourite artists because it brings them closer to the music. Taylor Swift’s new album has done an excellent job of recognizing this trend and has taken it one step further by providing incentives like exclusive merchandize in the CDs itself resulting in record breaking sales.