Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, breaking streaming and vinyl sale records. As Billboard reports, the album — which was quickly expanded into a 31-song deluxe edition just hours after its initial release — notched 2.61 million equivalent album units in the US, with traditional album sales making up 1.914 million. Those sales were a mix of digital downloads, CDs, vinyl, and cassettes — the album had more than 20 different versions available.
The Tortured Poets Department is Swift’s 14th album chart-topper, tying her with Jay-Z for the most among solo artists. The Beatles still hold the record with the most #1s with 19. The album generated 891.34 million on-demand streams, which is the largest streaming week ever — #2 is Drake’s Scorpion, which had 745.92 million streams in July 2018. By equivalent album units earned in a single week (how Billboard started counting in December 2014), The Tortured Poets Department is still #2 behind Adele’s 25, which had 3.482 million EAUs in 2015 compared to TTPD‘s 2.61 million.
With the 1.914 million traditional album sales, TTPD has the third-largest sales week in the modern era (since 1991), behind Adele’s 25 and *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached. The album also clocked the biggest sales week for a vinyl album in the modern era with 859,000 copies sold.
Naturally, The Tortured Poets Department has become the best-selling album of 2024 so far.
