Her latest album Midnights, released in late 2022, has been nothing short of a commercial and critical sensation. It’s also great for Swift, who’s earning more money from increased sales that will impact her performance on the Billboard charts and likely add up to one of the year’s best album debut weeks. The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement,” she wrote on social media at the time. In today’s streaming-centric music industry, physical albums have become collectible tokens of fandom, and artists have been responding to growing demand. With the current voting structure, there's a strong possibility that another unexpected outcome could happen at the 2024 ceremony.

While many are quick to predict another Album of the Year win for her, it's essential not to jump the gun just yet. Predictors have missed the mark several times recently, leaving industry experts and fans astonished. BTS and other K-pop megastars regularly rack up huge numbers by selling CDs and LPs with different colors and exclusive postcards and photos sold as collectible items, with the music as a secondary benefit. And yet, perhaps the real takeaway was the manner in which she spoke about her craft that night, some 20 years after writing her first song at the age of 12. It continues to sell and stream incredibly well, even after Swift dropped another full-length and scored multiple hits not featured on Midnights.So by offering four different versions of Midnights per format, Swift is at least quadrupling her revenue from some super fans, as well as their impact on the charts.

Grammy voters might be wary of granting her the same honor once again in such a short time frame, even if Midnights is deserving of the trophy. There are traces of melancholy layered in (see: “sapphire tears on my face”), but the song feels like a triumph, the sort of unabashed, extroverted fun that would have probably seemed out of place in the lockdown indie of 2020’s folklore and evermore. But then there’s “Bejeweled”, a late, 1989-like highlight on which she announces to an unappreciative partner, a few seconds in: “And by the way, I’m going out tonight. Midnights shouldn’t completely overshadow the exceptional work of other artists in contention for the Album of the Year Grammy. For over a decade, Taylor Swift has been offering fans a multitude of options when it comes to purchasing her albums across physical formats with exclusive editions available through a longstanding partnership with Target.

Olivia Rodrigo's Guts, SZA's SOS, Foo Fighters' But Here We Are and numerous other outstanding releases are all in the running and likely nominees.