Does Taylor Swift's album variants violate the assumption of independence?

No, that is not a dig at her romantic relationships.

It is instead a question about the impact of her numerous variants on descriptive data in the music industry. And if you found your way to this blog, you know that I love a good, relevant, pop-culture-driven example for explaining statistical concepts. Especially somewhat dry concepts, like the assumption of independence when collecting data.

Anyway.

Per Microsoft Copilot:

Across all formats, there are 34 different versions of the album:

8 vinyl
18 CD
1 cassette
7 digital

Microsoft Copilot. (2025, November 8). Response to query about Taylor Swift’s album variants [AI-generated response]. Microsoft Copilot.

A picture containing all eight vinyl variants of Taylor Swift's Life of a Show Girl

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueSwifties/comments/1n04kdu/the_life_of_a_showgirl_vinyl_variants_announced/

When overall album sales are counted by major industry players (Billboard, Luminate), every variant sale counts as one sale.

So, she is selling many albums, but it raises the question of whether her sales truly reflect the album's popularity among music listeners because the variants violate the assumption of independence.

For example, I purchased one copy of Brandi Carlile's new album, Returning to Myself (I don't collect records, but my husband does, and Brandi Carlile is one of the artists who exists in the Venn diagram overlap of our tastes in music). If someone is trying to ascertain the overall popularity of albums in the US this month, my one "vote" for BC would be up against a TS super collector who owns 10 variants of the same album.

Which makes me think of the statistical assumption of independence. Observations in your data should be independent of one another. If multiple versions of the same album are purchased by one person, surely the record sale numbers are no longer an accurate indicator of record popularity. Due to the many variants, the assumption of independence is violated.

Not that anyone cares about this, or that I even care about this strongly, but this would be a good, relevant, timely example of one of the assumptions that underlie all of our statistical analyses. Also, TS's You're On Your Own, Kid, will always be my walk-up song, but this phenomenon makes me wonder about the purity of album sales charts and statistical assumptions.

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