Taylor Swift on YouTube
Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” was a hit from the very start of her Life Of A Showgirl era, maintaining the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks underneath the album’s romantic lead single, “The Fate Of Ophelia.” An appearance on The Graham Norton Show – and a quick joke from fellow guest Domhnall Gleeson – inspired her to write an “Opalite” music video starring each of the guests who accompanied her on host Norton’s couch that night, taking everyone back to the ‘90s with a visual that draws from romcoms, the golden age of MTV, and even infomercials. Of course, in a classic Swiftian way, she snuck in lots of Easter eggs and lyrical references to the other 11 songs on The Life Of A Showgirl through things like neon signs in a mall.
But in a first for Swift, the music video premiered exclusively on paid tiers of Apple Music and Spotify rather than immediately being made available to all fans on YouTube.
Back in October, Swift premiered her music video for “The Fate Of Ophelia” on the big screen as part of The Release Party Of A Showgirl, a movie-style album breakdown that included commentary from Swift and a lyric video for each song on the record that made its way to theaters across the world during The Life Of A Showgirl’s release weekend. The video officially premiered on YouTube that Sunday night, and even the fans who saw The Release Party Of A Showgirl were eager to watch the visual again, thanks to not only the video itself but also Swift’s love of Easter eggs and layers of self-references. The film grossed $46 million worldwide, with U.S. tickets sold through AMC costing only $12, and the music video racked up 25 million views on YouTube within three days.
YouTube announced just over two months later that they would no longer send streaming data to Billboard for chart inclusion, citing Billboard’s choice to weigh music streams from paid subscribers more heavily than streams from ad-supported listeners. The new system for 2026 requires 2.5 free streams to equal one paid stream, a slight improvement to the previous model that required three free streams to equal one paid stream.
Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, shared the company’s position in a blog post, “The incredible work artists do to build a community on YouTube and their massive fan engagement is being undervalued in Billboard’s charts. Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported. This doesn’t reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.[…] We’re simply asking that every stream is counted fairly and equally, whether it is subscription-based or ad-supported—because every fan matters and every play should count.”
Since 2020’s surprise release of folklore, Swift had purposely withheld the release of her albums’ lead singles and corresponding music videos until the night the full project dropped to have the biggest impact on her first-week chart numbers, supplemented by blockbuster view counts on YouTube. She became the first artist to ever debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and Hot 100 songs chart simultaneously thanks to folklore and its dreamy lead “cardigan” being released at the same time, and has repeated the feat with almost every album that followed using the same strategy: evermore and “willow”; Red (Taylor’s Version) and “All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)”; Midnights and “Anti-Hero”; The Tortured Poets Department and “Fortnight.”
The only exceptions have been Fearless (Taylor’s Version) – a rerecording of her 2008 breakthrough album that didn’t employ a simultaneous video-and-album release – and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) – a rerecording of her entirely self-written 2010 album whose spotlighted single, “I Can See You,” got a music video premiere at an Eras Tour show and reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. She did get that double debut with 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and its breakout hit “Is It Over Now?,” though the song didn’t get an accompanying video release; and The Life Of A Showgirl and “The Fate Of Ophelia” despite its delayed YouTube release following the movie theater premieres.
Swift also leveraged YouTube’s impact on the Billboard charts by uploading her albums to her official channel, song-by-song. It started as audio visualizers for her 2019 Lover album that animated the album art, then graduated to lyric videos that tied into her fanbase’s focus on her lyrics and storytelling, beginning with 2020’s folklore. She uploaded both lyric videos and visualizers for The Life Of A Showgirl when it came out in October, choosing to higlight the album photoshoot in both – she previously shared in an Instagram video that she “wanted the fans to have as many images from this sort of world” as possible. As of January 2026, she had 399 million monthly listeners on YouTube, only second to the then-viral Aphex Twin.
YouTube may have been the primary home for visual music content, but Spotify introduced their Canvas feature in 2019, allowing artists and their teams to add looping visuals for fans to enjoy while listening to their songs. In-app music videos officially rolled out for listeners throughout North America in December 2025, just over a week before YouTube announced their withdrawal from Billboard chart data collection. Meanwhile, Apple Music offers an animated artwork feature as well as music videos, being a successor to Apple’s iTunes Store that allowed customers to purchase their favorite videos.
Swift famously pulled her work from Apple Music in 2014 to protest the company not paying artists for streams during users’ free three-month trials, which moved Apple to revisit their payment methods. Her music wasn’t available on Spotify either until 2017, also regarding fair payment for musicians – TIME noted when she pulled her music from the service in 2014, “It’s possible that Swift’s exodus will force Spotify to retool its business model in a way that’s beneficial to all artists.”
In the years since her moves to ensure artists are fairly paid by streaming platforms, Swift has worked with both Apple Music and Spotify on immersive projects for fans to enjoy. Her 1989 World Tour concert movie was exclusively available on Apple Music when it came out in December 2015, and she curated exclusive themed “Stages of Heartbreak” playlists leading up to the release of The Tortured Poets Department in April 2024.
She teamed up with Spotify for in-person pop-up exhibits teasing her Tortured Poets Department and The Life Of A Showgirl albums with lyrical Easter eggs, along with teasing Max Martin & Shellback’s Showgirl production credits with a playlist featuring every song she had made with them in the past – the playlist has since been updated to include the full Showgirl album.
Swift partnered with YouTube Shorts for user-generated content challenges to celebrate the releases of her “Anti-Hero” and “Fortnight” singles, with the latter campaign even becoming a Shorty Award finalist. It’s unclear if or how her collaborations with YouTube will continue.
Where “The Fate Of Ophelia” had racked up 25 million YouTube views within three days, propelled by the release hype of The Life Of A Showgirl and positive reactions from fans who saw it premiere in theaters first, “Opalite” garnered slightly under 8 million views in the three days following its YouTube upload on February 8th. It did, however, become the most-streamed music video in a single day in Spotify history within less than 12 hours, and Apple Music confirmed the next day that it became their most-streamed video in a single day as well. Neither platform has publicly shared specific view counts.
Music lovers and pop culture connoisseurs have mourned the gradual industry dismissal of music videos as a driver for songs in the digital era, with one fan on Reddit even calling the new Billboard shift a “massacre” for the art form after years of artists and labels honing in on social content rather than music videos. But perhaps this change can propel a renaissance instead, allowing fans to easily access music videos and other video content right on the platforms they tap into to listen to their favorite artists. The release of the “Opalite” music video on streaming services first, paired with digital downloads, led to the song returning to the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10 at #8, following its debut at #2 when it first came out. The track is expected to rise as physical CD and vinyl single shipments occur.
The “Opalite” music video is yet another example of Swift “dancing through the lightning strikes” and adapting to industry changes with clever moves that bridge her artistic and commercial success.
By Madison Murray
Featured Image: Taylor Swift on YouTube
