Swifties, Here's How To Hide the Old 'Fearless' on Your Spotify

April 09, 2021 | 08:00am

The old album can't come to the phone right now. Why? Because it's dead.

Swifties, Here's How To Hide the Old 'Fearless' on Your Spotify

For certain Taylor Swift fans, it's not enough to just stream Fearless (Taylor's Version); they want only farm-to-table, hand-raised, cage-free Taylor Swift music without even the whiff of involvement or profit by Scooter Braun. So they're finding ways to get rid of the old Fearless from their Spotify feeds, and it's pretty clever.

The account @swifferupdates shared a simple, if a little annoying, method for “hiding” all of the original Fearless tracks on Spotify: tap the three dots next to each track and select “hide this song” from the options that pop up. If you're really dedicated, you'll do this for all four released versions of Fearless, plus any remixes and bonus tracks that are lying around (you'll have to search for “Today Was a Fairytale” from the Valentine's Day soundtrack).

https://twitter.com/swifferupdates/status/1380142887153766400

The idea seems to be that many Swift fans' Spotify algorithms will, of course, be suggesting and auto-playing Fearless tracks on the regular, and they don't accidentally want to give the all-important stream to an old version of a song. That would put money into the pockets of Swift's former label, which would defeat the whole purpose of Swift re-releasing her music. She owns “Taylor's Version” and her most recent albums, but not the old stuff.

But as other fans have pointed out, if you're just careful while streaming, “hiding” isn't necessary. You can turn off the auto-play feature on Spotify, and/or add the new Fearless to a playlist alongside other Swift songs that she owns the masters to. A little curation never hurt anybody.

https://twitter.com/jillboard/status/1379839430479867906

While Swifties assiduously work to get the new tracks to the top of the charts, we're sure that they'll discover and then employ every trick possible to boost the numbers.

Swift herself hasn't ever told fans not to listen to her old music, but by releasing faithful re-records, she's giving them the opportunity to enjoy the music they love without any guilt over its association with her old team. What she did say was, “I’m counting down the minutes til we can all jump into this brave world together, filled with equal parts nostalgia and brand newness. Head first, Fearless." So, take that as you will.