Taylor Swift’s ‘folklore’ smashes Australian streaming charts

Taylor Swift dropped her surprise album folklore last week, and the record has already proven one of the biggest of 2020 both locally and globally.

The 16-track alternative-leaning record set multiple first-day streaming records around the world, and every single track landed in the Top 50 on Spotify and Apple Music’s Australian music charts.

Despite folklore being a marked departure from her tried and tested pop sound, the album set Spotify’s global record for first day album streams by a female artist with over 80.6M streams. It was then streamed 97.87M global streams on July 24, making Swift the most-streamed artist on the platform on any single day in 2020.

Swift also now holds the record for most streamed Pop Album on Apple Music with 35.47 first day streams globally. folklore has gone to #1 on iTunes in over 80 markets including Australia.

Though fans argued about what the biggest single from the record would be, ‘cardigan’ has emerged as a clear frontrunner. The track was added to all 46 New Music Friday Playlists on Spotify, landing on 18 playlist covers.

‘cardigan’ quickly became the #1 song on the Spotify Global Chart with over 7.7M streams. It’s the biggest Spotify debut since Travis Scott in October 2019.

Though arguably her least radio friendly album to date, local radio still can’t resist spinning Swift, and ‘cardigan’ was clearly the biggest track over the weekend with 175 plays between Friday and Sunday. It is also the #2 trending video on YouTube at the time of writing.

KIIS Sydney and Melbourne were the biggest lovers of the track, with 14 and 12 spins respectively so far.

Other tunes to get decent coverage across Aussie radio included ‘my tears ricochet’ (22), ‘august’ (21), ‘betty’ (22), and ‘the 1’ (27). The second most popular track so far has been Bon Iver feature tune ‘exile’, with 57 plays around the country.

With 2.56 million impacts so far this charting week, ‘cardigan’ looks set to impact the TMN Hot 100 powered by Radio Monitor mid-way up the chart.