On October 3rd, 2025, Taylor Swift released her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. The release immediately turned into a collector’s scavenger hunt. Fans, and especially parents, realized that they couldn’t simply buy one version of the album. Swift released dozens of versions, each with a different cover, color, or bonus track. It wasn’t the first time that the singer-songwriter released different versions of her album. However, it was with The Life of a Showgirl that some parents had had enough of Swift’s endless album variants. Why? Let’s find out.
The number of Showgirl versions
Reporters at Cosmopolitan found that the album had over 30 versions. 16 were on CD and 8 were on vinyl, along with one single cassette variant for those who like to listen to music in a more old-school way. There were also 2 deluxe CD editions. But that’s not all. She also released eleven digital versions of the album, each one with different bonus tracks.
Some of the physical versions were Target exclusives, while the digital-only releases could only be bought on Swift’s own website. Even the biggest Taylor Swift fans had to use spreadsheets to work out how to get the “right” album. Any parents trying to buy a complete edition of the album for their kids were completely out of luck. A full edition doesn’t exist.
What those versions included
So what did each version actually include? With the vinyl variants, each one came with a part of a special poem written by Swift. The only way to complete the poem was by buying each variant. Together, the poem created a prologue for the record. The physical versions also came with different colors and different bonus tracks, including acoustic versions of the main tracks and voice note demos.
Different CD versions came with different exclusive posters, too. For collectors, trying to get each version was fun. But it was less enjoyable for the parents who had to pay for each individual release for their children. Buying “just one more” album for the alternate artwork or bonus track gets expensive.
What it costs
The “Sweat and Vanilla” vinyl costs $29.99, while the cassette version costs $19.99. The crewneck sweatshirt box set version of the album is $65. Digital versions of the record were priced between $4.99 and $7.99. They were only available for a short time. The most expensive version of the album was $70 and came with a cardigan. None of these prices includes shipping.
Yes, not all of these costs are outrageous by themselves. But when you multiply the cost of one album by five or six different versions, parents end up paying triple digits during one album cycle. No wonder they’re frustrated.
An old tactic
However, such tactics aren’t new for Taylor Swift. In 2024, she released The Tortured Poets Department, which also came in multiple versions with exclusive tracks and covers. In fact, there were 36 different versions of Tortured Poets.
Taylor Swift isn’t the only person to release multiple versions of the same album. In fact, during Billboard’s coverage of Tortured Poets, they mentioned that this tactic has become a normal part of modern pop releases, especially for artists who dominate physical sales. The release of Showgirl just continued this trend.
Environmental and cost context
The cost of these albums isn’t the only issue that people have with the endless album variants. The increase in colored vinyl has raised production demands and prices across the industry, encouraging more artists to play the same trick as Swift. Unfortunately, that’s bad news for the environment.
More vinyls means more plastic, which ends up in landfills. Vinyl records contain PVC, and this releases greenhouse gases that significantly worsen global warming. Outside of the records themselves, the increased manufacturing and shipping for these different versions hurt the environment.
Parents feel pushed into unnecessary excess
Another problem that parents have is that the endless album variants encourage overconsumption in kids. They feel like they need to get the Target edition, the signed one, the digital exclusive version only available for a few hours, and so on. Most children don’t realize they’re being pulled along by marketing. They just see their friends posting another unboxing & feel left behind.
Branding each new edition as a “must-have” also encourages children to measure their sense of fandom in stuff. Teens connect belonging to buying. Soon enough, the entire music experience becomes a glorified form of consumption.
What “Showgirl” did in its first weeks
But it seems that having all these endless versions paid off in sales for Swift. Showgirl hit the top spot in almost every country it was released and also became the fastest-selling album in American history, with 3 million copies sold in the first week. A large part of this was due to the physical sales of the album, rather than mere streams.
For Taylor, it was yet another milestone. For parents, it was another dent or two in the credit card.