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Taylor Swift performs on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in Times Square on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, in New York. (AP)
It might seem like a throwaway pop culture note at the end of a busy week, but it’s actually not insignificant that Taylor Swift has already sold around 1.3 million copies of her album, “1989,” after just one week on the market. She’s not just the first artist of 2014 to sell a million copies in a week – she’s the first artist to sell a million albums, period, this year.
It’s not a feat that’s easily duplicated, in this age of music streaming and rampant piracy. So there’s a kind of promotional genius to what Swift has managed to pull off.
How do you go platinum in 2014? What’s the secret? That’s something we wondered about here this week at The Explicast, a new spinoff project from WBUR and On Point Radio with Tom Ashbrook, exploring the questions behind the week’s headlines.
This week’s query? How do you sell a million records?
Our source? Keith Caulfield, associate director of charts for Billboard Magazine.
Is Spotify Fair to Musicians? (On Point Radio, July 17, 2013)
Millions of faulty airbags in our cars, are set for recall. We look at what’s wrong with how Washington regulates road safety.
A three-star General on why we lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A conversation with a Jewish scholar and former Catholic priest turned writer about why Jesus’ Jewish roots matter.
The Supreme Court takes up another challenge to Obamacare. Could it cripple the Affordable Care Act?
