Swifties are out in force lately, rallying for their girl Taylor as she claims success after success in releasing new recorded versions of her albums.
Most recently, Taylor Swift has dropped short movies and released a new version of ‘All Too Well’ (the Sad Girl Autumn version, this time ’round), while the fandom goes for Jake Gyllenhaal on social media.
In amongst the flurry of Taylor Swift mania, iHeartRadio in the U.S. have declared that moving forward, they will only broadcast the re-recorded versions of Swift’s music on their network.
It’s a massive move on iHeartRadio’s behalf – they’re the largest radio network in North America. Not that this type of support is necessarily essential to Swift’s success; we all know how much of a commanding presence the singer has maintained over the last decade.
Still, it’s a significant move for such a prominent broadcaster to opt to support Swift’s music in this way; funnelling support direct to the artist, as opposed to the originally recorded material, which has been at the centre of a masters feud between Swift and Scooter Braun.
“Whenever Taylor re-records a new track, we immediately replace the old versions,” iHeartRadio’s Chief Programming Officer, Tom Poleman has said.
“Our stations will always deliver songs that artists are eager to share and fans want to hear. Listeners have made it known that they cannot wait to hear Taylor’s Version of each track. We are thrilled to provide a platform to share those with them, as well as the stories behind the songs from Taylor herself.”
With the release of Red (Taylor’s Version) last week, Swift smashed a Spotify record for the largest number of first day streams by any female artist ever. Interestingly enough, Swift broke a record she had already held, surpassing the 80.6 million streams her 2020 album Folklore racked up in its first day.
