Thom Yorke finally managed to bury the hatchet with Spotify and so too has Taylor Swift (even though “Beefs I Have Had” continues to make up approximately 90% of her lyrics). Her last album, Reputation, still did the sort of numbers most other acts can only dream of, but compared to 1989 it was something of a damp squib, so it’s no surprise she is throwing everything at her new album – and that includes Spotify.

The Love, Taylor: The Lover Enhanced Album rolling Spotify playlist was created to lead into the launch of Lover on 23rd August. The basis was a collection of love songs by artists that are Swift-approved – including ‘Come See About Me’ by Nicki Minaj, ‘Why Can’t I?’ by Liz Phair, ‘bad woman’ by Lykke Li and even ‘Can’t Stop Loving You’ by Phil Collins. And, yes, there are tracks by Taylor Swift in there like ‘The Archer’ and ‘ME!’ that were released before the album.

“Artist creates a playlist of songs they like” is not really a story but where this is different is there is a short welcome video (where she explains the playlist concept) as well as spoken-word tracks where she recites snippets of lyrics from songs from the upcoming album alongside an animation of them being written out. (This visualisation is only available on the Spotify mobile app and it’s an audio-only playback on the desktop app.)

Once the album was released, the playlist added all its tracks plus “messages from Taylor for fans, story behind the songs and more treats to bring the colourful world of Lover to life”.

Spotify is clearly experimenting with what a playlist can be and how interactive elements are added to it. It did something similar for the launch of the Billie Eilish album earlier in the year and it makes sense to push this even further as a gesture of support for an act that it has had very public battles with over the years. This is what we can perhaps call Armistice Marketing.