Given that her MySpace page played a huge role in building her career, it should come as no surprise that the title song from Taylor Swift’s second album is already getting buzz on the Internet — even though no one can hear the recorded version of the song yet.
The album, titled Fearless, doesn’t come out until Nov. 11, but Taylor gave a performance of the title song to fans on her tour bus last year, and a radio station put the audio online. A bunch of her fans found it, and now YouTube has close to 100 versions posted of people singing "Fearless."
It caused a bit of a problem. It is, in absolute terms, copyright infringement, though her record company figures it’s better to have fans excited about her new music than have them frustrated by legalities. So the label isn’t doing anything to stop it — other than counseling Taylor that debuting new music as she did on the bus is not such a good idea in the digital age.
"I wasn’t allowed to play new music for people after that," Taylor told USA Today.
For her part, Taylor is upbeat about the exposure for "Fearless."
"If you know that somebody's passionate enough about a song to want to sing it, that's a really good indicator that it's going to do well," she said.