#Taylor Swift album ‘Folklore’ breaks Spotify, Apple Music streaming records

Since dropping last Thursday at midnight, “Folklore” was streamed 80.6 million times on Spotify, breaking the Swedish company’s record for first-day album streams by a female artist, it said. “Folklore” is also the most-streamed pop album on Apple Music in 24 hours with 35.5 million streams, Apple said.

The “Shake It Off” pop star’s eighth studio album logged over 1.3 million copies sold globally in under 24 hours, Republic Records said.

The album, which was written in quarantine, includes personal stories, as well as stories written from the perspective of others, Swift said, adding that she let her imagination “run wild” on “Folklore.”

The ten-time Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter teased the release of her surprise album, “Folklore” on social media last Thursday before releasing it hours later. It includes a music video for the track “Cardigan,” along with a collaboration with indie folk band Bon Iver on a song called “exile.”

“It started with imagery. Visuals that popped into my mind and piqued my curiosity,” Swift explained on Twitter last week. “Stars drawn around scars. A cardigan that still bears the scent of loss twenty years later. Battleships sinking into the ocean, down, down, down. The tree swing in the woods of my childhood.”