Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well.

Let's talk about a topic that I see becoming an increasingly contentious issue, especially in the pop sphere, variants. I didn't mean to give anybody a COVID PTSD memory there. No, I'm talking about vinyl variants.

Now, as any music fan or physical media collector knows, when it comes to vinyl records, more often than not, what you're running into when you open the package and pull the record out of its sleeve is your standard 12-inch black 33 1/3 type vinyl. But colored variants of these records have been around for almost as long as their black counterparts. Whether you're talking about solid colors, splatters, spirals, all sorts of crazy designs.

Obviously, doing albums in this style rather than the regular black as a specialty can sometimes get a bit more expensive. But you know what? It looks fucking cool, which is why artists and labels and fans are often willing to shell out those extra dollars because it just makes the experience they're having with the music they love even more interesting, especially if you're coming at it from the angle of a collector or something like that.

For decades, especially in the midst of the vinyl revival of the 2000s, underground artists of all types and stripes have used the art form of the colored vinyl variant to entice fans into spending more money, boosting more sales, and buoying many a career in the process. Even indie label Titans such as Subpop, have made a regular practice of this through their "Loser Edition" series, where they'll often do some colored variant of a first run of records, which they will certify with a "Loser" sticker. Again, as a means of making money off of and even breaking even on these various album cycles, and rewarding fans who are willing to buy into an artist's new album early.

Now, again, this model has been around for years and years and years and years. It's nothing new, but for a long time, it was very obscure, very niche, very small scale. But in recent years, especially with vinyl sales peaking yet again for another year, this way of enticing fans to spend more money and support the artist that they love is being wielded in a super cynical way. And honestly, I blame Taylor Swift. Just going to be real about that.

We have spoken about her with respect to this topic before on this channel, but mostly in the context of the fact that the vinyl industry these days, the various plants where records are produced, are sometimes too few and far between to really meet the demand of fans and artists. As a result, when a new album cycle comes into town from a major top-selling artist, these plants will often put on hold smaller, more independent projects because these larger artists who are likely to sell thousands and thousands and thousands of these things are going to be given priority, which sucks.

But simultaneously, it's not something I really fault Taylor Swift for, specifically, because it's not like she personally decides how many functional vinyl plants there are in the country or across the world. In fact, one day she may just run her own and just print all of her own variants out of it.

What I will question Taylor Swift on is her carelessness in just casually making this problem worse because pretty much all of her most recent album cycles have included one variant after another. The variants are so high in number, I can't help but feel like she's embracing this long, respected business model in a way that's cynical.

Like, once you drop eight different vinyl versions of your new album, what market demand are you really meeting at that point? Are you really giving your fans what they want, or are you merely exploiting a very weird niche monopoly that you have over a certain market of fans who are basically going to shell money out for anything you physically drop. It's like having a fin-dom relationship with your fan base, and it gets even more cringe when you consider that dropping all these records isn't just for Taylor, a money-making venture. I mean, that alone is weird because how much more of a billionaire does she need to be?

But also consider that this strategy is very much a play for continued chart dominance. Enter this most recent announcement of a CD single for the song "Opalite", which was available on Taylor Swift's store for just 48 hours, contains just two single tracks, features the most boring, uninspired blue-gray cover art you've ever seen in your life. Photoshop is truly my passion.

And Taylor is also only selling this in the US and for the rock bottom price of $2.99, which I mean, I appreciate she's not gouging her fans for this CD, but that only further confirms the theory that she's not necessarily selling these disks for a major profit.

At $2. 99 producing these things, shipping them out in a timely manner, you're either going to be just making barely that or maybe even losing a bit of money. But Taylor Swift, knowing her fan base, can probably move thousands and thousands of these units in a matter of a couple of days and further pump up the "Opalite"' chart position as a result. And again, for what reason? Out of just pure ego? Who honestly cares about chart positions this much.

If the "Opalite" chart positions and RIAA certifications become more favorable as a result of these sales, which no doubt they will, does Taylor Swift not realize that she's muddying the waters of those accolades because the reason that she's earning those certifications and those chart positions is not because of the quality of the music, but a marketing strategy. Marketing is Taylor's canvas, and CD and vinyl variants are her paint brush.

Now, the last thing I'll say about all of this is that conversations around this very obnoxious issue have grown to become more and more difficult to have because this practice has become increasingly normalized as a means of actually competing on the charts. So now any pop artist who's vying for that top spot and looking to hold it for any considerable amount of time, they're going through this crazy vinyl variant process, too. BRAT had variants up the wazoo.

I'll bring up Billie Eilish here as well for her Hit Me Hard and Soft album cycle. Although Billie has stood out a little bit as a positive force on this front when it comes to releasing albums in this way, because historically, she has gone the extra mile to make sure that recycled plastics are going into these variant records so that dropping these sorts of alternate versions isn't a total waste.

But still, even with that extra care put in, it's very difficult to get a word in edgewise and make any headway in dialogue and conversations around this growing trend. Because the moment that you point out that someone like Taylor Swift is engaging in this practice in a very cheap and tacky way, in a desperately money-hungry way, it is immediately shot back in your face. "Well, Billie did vinyl variants, too." Okay, man. Did you buy your "Opalite" CD yet?

It's just unfortunate to see these days more proof that pretty much everything you see on the charts these days is there as a result of some gaming or scheming or weird behavior. It's pretty much almost never because somebody made some genuinely good music that organically grew, and music fans across the board just broadly cared about it.

And look, I'm not coming on here saying that vinyl records are bad. I'm not somebody who's obviously against physical media by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I feel like we need physical media now more than ever in an age of AI slop and streaming fatigue and streaming platforms doing worse and worse by artists every year. But it's just a shame when everything cool about owning and collecting records is cheapened by the medium being used to just inflate sales because a certain subset of people will just buy them like crack.

Those are my thoughts. Let me know yours down in the comments.

Anthony Fantano, vinyl variants, forever.