The Visitors, the “final” ABBA album, came out in November 1981. The CD was still in development then and the first titles on the format would not be commercially released until late 1982. That’s how “new technology” the music business was as ABBA were splitting up – for good, as many presumed. 

Of course that was not quite the end of it and they reappeared in September 2021, with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus holding a press event that was streamed on YouTube where they announced the immediate release of two new tracks on DSPs and confirmed that an album (Voyage) would follow in November. Oh, and the band would “reform” as digital ‘ABBA-tars’ (their term) at a purpose-built venue in London from May 2022. 

From being entirely analogue, the return of ABBA saw them have to become almost entirely digital, building an online and social media presence from scratch. And central to it all was a heavy D2C strategy, using the promise of seeing virtual versions of them perform “live” as the hook to drive vinyl and CD sales. 

To even vaguely be in with a chance of getting tickets to the 2022 shows before the huge public scramble began, fans could pre-order the album in a dizzying array of formats and colours to get into the show pre-sale. (The first tranche of tickets, of course, sold out in seconds.)

There are picture disc vinyl editions, green vinyl, white vinyl, multiple CD and cassette editions with each individual member’s face (in ‘ABBA-tar’ mode) on the cover, multiple bundle offerings… On and on it goes. It can feel like you are risking RSI by scrolling through the different formats and iterations on their web store. 

It is the most “take no prisoners” D2C offering we have seen in a long time. To be able to afford every version of every format you’d have to be… as rich as any of the members of ABBA. 

Naturally, it worked a treat. The album went straight to number 1, was accused of causing The Great Vinyl Shortage, it outsold the rest of the UK top 40 combined on release week and ABBA were, according to the Official Charts Company, only the fourth act in the past decade to clock up over 200,000 UK chart sales in release week. 

These numbers are hugely impressive on any level; but coming from a band that last released music in a time before the CD and who had to enter the world of D2C from a standing start, they are nothing short of jaw-dropping.