No, that’s not a dig at her romantic relationships.
It’s as a substitute a query concerning the influence of her quite a few variants on descriptive information within the music trade. And for those who discovered your approach to this weblog, that I really like a superb, related, pop-culture-driven instance for explaining statistical ideas. Particularly considerably dry ideas, like the belief of independence when amassing information.
Anyway.
Per Microsoft Copilot:
Throughout all codecs, there are 34 completely different variations of the album:
- 8 vinyl
- 18 CD
- 1 cassette
- 7 digital
Microsoft Copilot. (2025, November 8). Response to question about Taylor Swift’s album variants [AI-generated response]. Microsoft Copilot.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueSwifties/feedback/1n04kdu/the_life_of_a_showgirl_vinyl_variants_announced/ |
When general album gross sales are counted by main trade gamers (Billboard, Luminate), each variant sale counts as one sale.
So, she is promoting many albums, but it surely raises the query of whether or not her gross sales really replicate the album’s recognition amongst music listeners as a result of the variants violate the belief of independence.
For instance, I bought one copy of Brandi Carlile’s new album, Returning to Myself (I do not gather data, however my husband does, and Brandi Carlile is likely one of the artists who exists within the Venn diagram overlap of our tastes in music). If somebody is attempting to establish the general recognition of albums within the US this month, my one “vote” for BC could be up in opposition to a TS tremendous collector who owns 10 variants of the identical album.
Which makes me consider the statistical assumption of independence. Observations in your information must be unbiased of each other. If a number of variations of the identical album are bought by one individual, certainly the report sale numbers are not an correct indicator of report recognition. Because of the many variants, the belief of independence is violated.
Not that anybody cares about this, or that I even care about this strongly, however this may be a superb, related, well timed instance of one of many assumptions that underlie all of our statistical analyses. Additionally, TS’s You are On Your Personal, Child, will at all times be my walk-up track, however this phenomenon makes me surprise concerning the purity of album gross sales charts and statistical assumptions.
