Taylor Swift Makes Ancient Debut at No. 1 on Billboard 200 With ‘The Tortured Poets Department’
The Tortured Poets Department offered 1.914 million copies in weak album sales in its first week (purchases of digital downloads, CDs, vinyl LPs and cassette tapes). That marks the third-largest sales week for an album in the novel know-how — since Luminate started electronically tracking song sales in 1991.
The Tortured Poets Department’s sales were bolstered by its availability all the most life like doubtless intention via 19 different physical configurations (nine CDs, six vinyl LPs and four cassettes, with four of the physical configurations completely offered by Goal shops) and two digital win offerings (the customary 16-song album, and a shock deluxe 31-song model that became released two hours after the novel album bowed). All of the variants are itemized later on this memoir.
Of The Tortured Poets Department’s first-week sales of 1.914 million, physical sales comprise 1.64 million (859,000 vinyl LPs — a up to the moment-know-how single week document for an album on vinyl, 759,500 CDs and pretty over 21,500 cassettes) and digital downloads comprise 274,000.
The Tortured Poets Department is the seventh Swift album to possess offered as a minimum 1 million copies in a single week, following the debuts of 1989 (Taylor’s Model), Hours of darkness, reputation, the novel 1989, Pink and Discuss Now. She is largely the most efficient act with seven different albums to every promote as a minimum 1 million copies in a single week in the novel know-how. In total, there were 26 cases — by 24 different albums — in which an album has offered as a minimum 1 million copies in a week in the novel know-how. A trend of albums, Adele’s 25, offered better than 1 million in three separate weeks.
Six of the end 10 million-promoting weeks took place in the early 2000s, in the pre-digital and pre-streaming heyday of the CD — when actually essentially the most efficient potential to hear to song on-establish a query to became by buying an album. The twelve months 2000 became the excessive-water price in the novel know-how for album sales, when 785 million albums were offered in the U.S. Comparably, in 2023, there were 105.32 million albums offered, and Swift offered essentially the most of any act — accounting for 6% of all U.S. album sales in 2023. (Standard streaming products and providers Spotify and Apple Song did not initiate in the U.S. until 2011 and 2015, respectively.)
Here’s a recap of the end 10 ultimate-promoting weeks by albums in the novel know-how (1991-demonstrate), ranked in repeat by sales quantity.
Detestable, Artist, Title, Sales, Chart Date
1, Adele, 25, 3.378 million, Dec. 12, 2015
2, *NSYNC, No Strings Related, 2.416 million, April 8, 2000
3, Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department, 1.914 million, May maybe maybe maybe merely 4, 2024
4, *NSYNC, Giant name, 1.88 million, Aug. 11, 2001
5, Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP, 1.76 million, June 10, 2000
6, Backstreet Boys, Unlit & Blue, 1.591 million, Dec. 9, 2000
7, Taylor Swift, 1989 (Taylor’s Model), 1.359 million, Nov. 11, 2023
8, Eminem, The Eminem Define, 1.322 million, June 15, 2002*
9, Britney Spears, Oops! …I Did It Again, 1.319 million, June 3, 2000
10, Taylor Swift, 1989, 1.287 million, Nov. 15, 2014
(Sales source: Luminate. *All weeks are debuts, excluding for The Eminem Define, which debuted on the chart dated June 8, 2002, from a partial week of sales resulting from an off-cycle early release. The June 15, 2002, chart mirrored the album’s first week of availability.)
