Taylor Swift, one artist who can still sell physical albums, is Record Store Day’s Global Ambassador
After Evermore broke vinyl sales records, Taylor Swift is becoming a spokesperson for record stores
Taylor Swift’s Evermore is apparently one of the best-selling vinyl records of all time, a fact that seems slightly less impressive when you note that nobody thought to track that kind of information until after CDs were introduced, but that gives her a certain level of prestige in the record store community—so much so that the people in charge of Record Store Day have named Swift their first Global Ambassador.
This year is the 15th anniversary of the annual event in which record stores gather up exclusives and promotional deals to convince people to buy from them rather than whichever more relevant technology they’re competing with (15 years ago it was still iTunes, now it’s 10-second clips on TikTok). It’s also worth pointing out that Taylor Swift is also hugely popular on streaming, though.
We don’t know exactly what being a Global Ambassador for Record Store Day entails, but it probably involves Taylor Swift just… you know, existing and allowing her name to be attached to Record Store Day materials. The tweet from RSD announcing this news mentioned her wearing a sash, but that might just be a joke. We hope not, for Swift’s sake, but we don’t know. Some kind of special Taylor Swift-related release seems pretty likely, at the very least.
She did put out a statement, courtesy of Uproxx, in which she says that “the places where we go to browse and explore and discover music and old” have always been “sacred” to her, adding that they “create settings for live events” and “employ people who adore music thoroughly and purely.” She also highlights the importance of supporting small businesses so they can “stay alive, stay eccentric, and stay individual.” (In other words, you could buy the deluxe version of Evermore with some kind of exclusive and overpriced tie-in book at Target, but maybe don’t, even though you probably already did since it’s one of the best-selling vinyl albums of all time the last 30 years or so.)