TAYLOR SWIFT BROKE THE RECORD FOR WEEKLY VINYL SALES IN THREE DAYS
Taylor Swift
Another Taylor Swift album cycle, another barrage of broken records for music’s conquering titan. According to Variety, Swift has already sold 700,000 vinyl copies of The Tortured Poets Department, breaking the record for weekly vinyl sales in just three days. By the time the week is out, she’ll have broken the previous record of 693,000 copies set by Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version), which toppled the previous record of 570,000 set by Taylor Swift’s Midnights.
These sales figures are for “the modern era,” marking the period from 1991 onward when SoundScan began to track sales numbers. That means other artists may have sold more than Swift back when vinyl was the dominant way of consuming music, but no one comes close to touching Swift’s vinyl sales in the 30-plus years since. In 2022, she sold more vinyl records than the next two biggest sellers (Harry Styles and The Beatles) combined; one in every 25 vinyl LPs sold was a Taylor Swift album. In 2023, one in every 15 vinyl LPs was a Swift album (via Billboard).
Of course, as we’ve noted before, Swift doesn’t break these records solely on the strength of the music. She released four different versions of the album on vinyl, each with minor differences (bonus tracks, album covers, and the color of the physical record) to make it worth buying potentially multiple different versions of the same record. Swift is skilled at creating collectibles that her fans will love: Midnights had four different editions that could be joined together to make a clock (Swift sold the accompanying gadgetry); folklore had a staggering nine different editions. This goes beyond vinyl, as well. According to Billboard, Tortured Poets marked Swift’s biggest sales week ever for an album at 1.4 million copies—which, as the outlet notes, is bolstered by the availability of “20 different editions among physical and digital configurations.”
This comes despite mixed reviews of the album, with some critics lauding Tortured Poets as an “instant classic” while others derided it as more of the same. (On our B review, we noted that “the influence of that hyperproductivity is evident in Tortured Poets. Production-wise, many of Swift’s collaborations with Jack Antonoff sound like Midnights B-sides, or worse, like 1989 Vault Tracks (essentially, C-sides).”) One frequent criticism of her 11th album is that it was overstuffed; already long with 16 tracks, Swift added an additional 15 with her surprise double album drop of TTPD: The Anthology.
But the 31-song project is part of what makes the album a financial success. Swift also smashed the Spotify records for most-streamed album and most-streamed artist in a single day with the TTPD release. Per Billboard, she generated 490.2 million on-demand official streams in three days. So far that’s second only in 2024 to Drake (514 million on-demand official streams), who had a similarly supersized 23-track strategy with For All The Dogs. If fans keep listening to the double album in its entirety, Swift could top Drake’s record and her own first-week streaming record (549.3 million for Midnights). Similarly, her sales will no doubt be boosted if and when she announces physical copies, vinyl or otherwise, for The Anthology. Whatever the critical appraisal of the album might be, there’s no doubt it’s a triumphant (and lucrative) continuation of Swift’s cultural dominance.
2024-04-23T15:36:02Z dg43tfdfdgfd