4 million copies in one week: Taylor Swift breaks another record with “Showgirl”

By the middle of last week, Taylor Swift had already broken another record in the music industry, with the first week sales of her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl”, surpassing those of Adele’s “25”, from a decade ago. The only question was how high these numbers would rise by the end of the week.

The answer: very, very high.

“The Life of a Showgirl” ended the week with the equivalent of 4,002,000 sales in the United States, according to tracking service Luminate. In 2015, Adele’s “25” sold 3,482,000 copies upon debut, a total that was not surpassed for a decade.

“Showgirl” became Swift’s 15th album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200, Billboard magazine announced Monday. Only the Beatles have more number 1 titles, with 19.

Swift fever was fueled by her Eras Tour, which ended last year as the highest-grossing tour in history. On Monday, Swift announced two tour-related projects coming to Disney+: “The End of an Era,” a six-episode docuseries about the development and “behind the scenes” of the tour, with two episodes released per week starting December 12, and “The Final Show,” a film of the tour’s final show in Vancouver, British Columbia, also premiering December 12.

The equivalent sales number attributed to “Showgirl” is a composite that incorporates the album’s popularity on streaming services along with purchases of the full album. Breaking down these numbers illustrates how Swift has completely mastered every available format.

The album sold 3,479,500 copies as a complete package on CD, vinyl, downloads and even cassette. In the streaming era, surpassing 1 million sales has become a rare achievement: So far this year, the biggest traditional sales number outside of Taylor Swift is the Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” with just over 500,000. Selling 1 million in a single week is a feat achieved by very few. Besides Swift and Adele, the last artist to achieve this was Lady Gaga, who sold 1,108,000 copies of “Born This Way” in May 2011 — shortly before Spotify arrived in the United States.

“Showgirl” sold a staggering 1,334,000 copies last week on vinyl, breaking a modern-era record for first-week sales set by Swift herself last year when she sold 859,000 vinyl copies of “The Tortured Poets Department.”