The power of the Swifties: Taylor’s ‘Midnights’ breaks streaming and vinyl sales records
Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” may be one of the most anticipated new tunes of the year, but it only managed to sell 1 million copies of its vinyl single first week.
The “Shake It Off” singer sold 1.2 million copies of its 10-track album over the first two days of release, according to Nielsen Music. That’s an astonishingly swift start for a pop album, especially one by a pop star whose career has never been short on impressive sales.
“Midnights” also broke streaming records for a pop album, with 4 million streams in its first six hours, according to Billboard. The album was also streamed in the top 10 for the week of its release, with 11 million streams in total, as reported by Billboard.
Those sales and streams aren’t enough to guarantee Swift a spot on Billboard’s “500 Hot 100 Songs To Hear Before You Die,” though. While she was the first solo artist to be featured on the list, along with artists like Prince, Drake, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Jay Z and Rihanna, she will need to at least break the 1 million streaming units for her album to get there, according to Billboard.
Swift was also the first artist to have a full-length album debut at Number One on Billboard’s Top 200 chart with the single ” Look What You Made Me Do,” which also hit the top spot on the Digital Songs chart.
While the single is up for a Grammy win, “Shake It Off” is still more than a little ahead of the curve. It was released two months after the Grammys announced that the album will be giving out three prizes, including Album of the Year.
Before “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift had achieved the most significant milestone in her career: She released her fifth album, 1989, in 2008. That album debuted at Number One on a record-setting week, and went on to sell 3 million copies over its first week of release.