By Sarah Borland

Decades ago, it would have been a massive achievement to have a successful album soar its way into the charts. Many years on, artists are releasing multiple versions of the same album, with each featuring additional songs or alternative artwork. Is the concept of releasing deluxe albums really about the fans, or is it a money-making tactic?

Recent deluxe releases include The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamond, which had at least 43 different variants all with the same track list but different LP colours and alternative artwork, The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstasy, which has an additional nine songs but is lacking the poster contained in the standard LP, and Gracie Abrams’ The Secret of Us, which also features alternative artwork and more tracks.

One of the main culprits for this is infamous star Taylor Swift, who has recently been re-releasing her old albums, branding them as ‘Taylor’s Version’. As well as putting out remastered versions of her songs, she is releasing ‘vault tracks’; songs written originally for that album that never made it on. We are then left to wonder: if they were not good enough to be on the album all those years ago, why put them on the re-released version now? The simple answer is to make fans buy and stream the latest version of the album as they get ‘exclusive’ and ‘unheard’ songs.

This is not only an issue with Swift’s re-releases, but also her brand new albums. Her 2022 album Midnights not only came in four different colours with the same track lists, but the back of each edition featured one-quarter of a clock face, which also required a clock kit sold through her online shop to complete an unusable clock.

The announcement of the 16-track-long The Tortured Poets Department omitted the release of a 31-track-long album, as Swift surprised fans on release day. While it would make sense for there to be two separate albums for the physical media release – the standard release and the deluxe release – but no. Instead of putting out the deluxe album on physical media, Swift released the standard album, featuring one of four extra songs. So, if you wanted to physically collect all of the extra songs, you would have to purchase the same album at least four times to collect each single.

This has caused a stir with both the general public and other artists who do not agree with these methods. Recently, award-winning artist Billie Eilish branded the concept of multiple album variants as “wasteful” and “irritating”. She went on to criticise musicians who care more about numbers and making money than being sustainable.

In a day where people are struggling to pay their bills due to inflation, are these artists really thinking of their fans anymore? Is this morally wrong for artists to expect people to buy the same album over and over?