In not allowing any songs on Taylor Swift’s blockbuster album The Life of a Showgirl to be downloaded à la carte for the first week of the album’s availability, the Swift camp and Republic Records revived a marketing strategy employed extensively by the major labels back in the 1990s and then selectively deployed again in the 2010s.

Or as one veteran label executive put it when it was pointed out that fans could only buy the complete album on iTunes and Amazon and no individual song downloads: “Wow, that’s very old school — the infamous album-only strategy.”

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Down through the yea

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