Over the years we’ve repeatedly pointed out how rare it has always been for an artist to sell a million copies of an album in a week. And now Taylor Swift did it in a day. She sold 1.4 million copies of The Tortured Poets Department on April 19 alone. 600,000 of those were on vinyl. In one day.
I own one of those first 600,000 records. My wife picked it up for me at Target while she was out running errands on release day. (That’s love!)
In its first week of release, ending April 25, The Tortured Poets Department sold 1.914 million albums with 859,000 on vinyl, 759,500 on CDs, and 21,500 on cassette, plus 274,000 digital album downloads. That’s the the third-largest sales week for any album in the Soundscan/Luminate era (i.e., since 1991). The only two albums to have sold more in a single week are Adele’s historically bonkers 25 with 3.378 million in 2015 and *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached with 2.416 million in 2000.
The fact that TTPD is available in 19 different physical configurations (nine CDs, six vinyl LPs and four cassettes) didn’t hurt, of course. But Swift is the only artist who continues to inspire her fans to fork over cash like this. She’s the only artist in Soundscan/Luminate history with seven different albums to each sell at least 1 million copies in a single week.
Along with the sales figures, the album earned 2.61 million “equivalent album units” (the multi-metric consumption measure where each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams). There were 891.34 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 21 songs (the largest streaming week for an album ever) and 140,000 individual track sales (who still downloads songs?!?). Billboard’s main album chart, the Billboard 200, is based on these “equivalent album units” because nobody other than Taylor Swift sells albums anymore.
Continue reading Understatement: Taylor Swift sells a whole lot of records