Taylor Swift wants you to join her army.

With the sales performance of her latest album, 2014’s 1989, Swift has proven an all-conquering force in pop music. That’s right, pop. Over 1.3 million copies sold in the first week kind of pop.

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Shaking off her country-pop label, Swift has sold more copies of this, her fifth LP, than any album released in the last 12 years. Even Coldplay are yet to reach 800,000 records sold with their latest album, Ghost Stories.

Sales of this level indicate Swift has now sold more albums in her career than some of the music world’s biggest acts; people like U2, Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, Phil Collins and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few.

Taylor Swift sells more albums than Coldplay. Photo: Getty

Now ponder the kind of power an artist of this calibre could wield, were they dissatisfied with any aspect of their life. Like, for example, the royalties earned from a streaming media service. They could really do some damage.

Swift did just that, pulling a Streisand move by holding back 1989 from online streaming media service, Spotify.

Fans of the streaming media service were shocked. How could Swift turn her back on her loyal subjects?

Instead, Tay-Tay inked an exclusive deal with Apple, to sell and stream her new album through the iTunes Store and Apple’s newly acquired Beats Music streaming service.

But considering reports from Apple indicated a downturn in iTunes Store sales by roughly 24 per cent, it appears Swift was betting on the wrong horse.

You may find it easier to understand when you imagine for a moment that Swift was actually betting on a different race.

A report from the Recording Industry Association of America showed physical music sales were down 4.9 per cent for the first half of 2014, with digital download sales also down by 2.5%.

Over the same period, digital music streaming actually grew by a whopping 28 per cent, accounting for 27 per cent of the industry’s revenue.

It’s interesting to note that physical sales of music account for 28 per cent, indicating music streaming will outpace physical sales in the not-too-distant future, if they already haven’t.

To get this straight: Swift chose to move away from one streaming music company – a service with more than 60 million users and over 15 million paying subscribers – instead striking an exclusive deal with a music service that shows a clear decline in sales per user.

Does that make sense to you?

So what happened when all those Spotify users couldn’t listen to Tay-Tay’s new LP? Did they slam their bedroom doors, threatening never to come out again? Nope. They ran and bought it from iTunes.

Clever girl.

Digital sales of the album leapt, surpassing the supposed income generated from streaming media avenues, and Swift popped another double magnum of Cristal.

Oh, it doesn’t end there.

Thanks to the recent social media movement to encourage Triple J to include Swift in the Hottest 100 countdown – #Tay4Hottest100 – the album has enjoyed a second wind.

We wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the entire campaign was created by a guerrilla marketing agency – like the famous Oscars’ selfie set up by a Samsung PR agency.

Swift can’t be stopped. From a business point of view. From a marketing point of view.

Incidentally, you can listen to 1989 on Spotify. There’s a lullaby version of the entire album just waiting for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!