Taylor Swift Breaks Spotify Album Pre-Save Record with ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

Photo Credit: Jana Beamer / CC by 2.0

Just one day ahead of the release of her highly anticipated 11th studio album, Taylor Swift broke Spotify’s record for the most pre-saved album countdown page in the streaming platform’s history.The countdown page for Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, launched on March 28, and has been updated all week with new lyrics and cryptic clues for Swifties to unravel leading up to the album’s release. The album officially drops on Friday, April 19, at 8 PM ET, and the songstress has teased that something special might be in store for fans on Saturday.

And only a day before the album’s official release, Spotify took to social media to announce the news of the latest record on the streaming service to be broken by Swift: on April 18, The Tortured Poets Department had become the most pre-saved album countdown page in Spotify history.

Swift revealed in an Easter egg-filled teaser clip on her socials that a music video is set to drop at the same time as the album’s release at 8 PM ET on April 19. She’s also posted a handful of clips with snippets of song lyrics and other cryptic references in anticipation of the album’s debut.Murals even started to appear in cities like Chicago, with QR codes linking to more mysterious clips. Swift even opened a pop-up library installation at The Grove in Los Angeles in collaboration with Spotify, featuring shelves of books and visual surprises, updated each day from April 16-18 in the lead-up to the album’s release.

In another collaboration, this time with Apple Music, Swift released five curated playlists with her previous songs organized into the “five stages of heartbreak,” — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — leading fans to speculate that the upcoming album will focus on an exploration of heartbreak.

Swift first announced her 11th album while accepting the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2024 Grammy Awards for her previous album, Midnights. The upcoming 16-track album features a single with Post Malone, and a song with Florence and the Machine vocalist Florence Welch.