Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” broke a litany of streaming records during its first weekend, marking the latest mega-release for the billionaire pop star—and its commercial success could continue this week.
Attendees take pictures at Spotify’s Taylor Swift pop-up at The Grove for her new album “The … [+]
It took just three days for “The Tortured Poets Department” to break the record for the most sales of a vinyl album in a week with 700,000 LP copies sold over the weekend, Variety reported Tuesday; the record was previously held by “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” and “Midnights” before that, which Swift released in October 2022.
“Tortured Poets” broke Spotify’s record for most-streamed album in a single day on April 19, surpassing a record previously held by Swift’s 2022 release “Midnights” (184.7 million)—and while Spotify didn’t say exactly how many streams the album had, it said it was the first to surpass 300 million daily streams.
Apple Music reported the album broke its record for first-day streams of a pop album, and Amazon said it became the most-streamed album on Amazon Music ever on its first day alone.
Swift also became the most-streamed artist on Spotify in a single day on April 19, beating the record she set herself with last year’s release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version).”
“Fortnight (feat. Post Malone),” the lead single from “Tortured Poets,” also broke a record, becoming Spotify’s most-streamed song in a single day, and as of Monday afternoon the song had more than 39 million streams.
“The Tortured Poets Department” also broke Swift’s own sales records in addition to several platforms’ single-day streaming records, with Billboard reporting the album sold 1.4 million copies in traditional album sales on the day of its release, marking the biggest sales week in the U.S. for any of her albums.
Whether Swift continues to break records. If any of her songs top the Billboard Hot 100, she will surpass Whitney Houston and tie Madonna for having the third most chart-toppers (12) among solo female artists. Rihanna and Mariah Carey would stay ahead of Swift, with 14 and 19 number one hits, respectively.
31. That’s how many songs total were released as part of the double album, titled: “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.” Sixteen songs were released at midnight on April 19, and at 2 a.m. Swift announced another 15 songs were out, saying on social media, “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you.”
Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department” a little more than two months after announcing it at the Grammys, where she won Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year for her 10th studio album, “Midnights.” Fans expected the new album to focus heavily on the end of Swift’s six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, though many fans believe some songs focused on her relationship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Swift has dominated the music industry and continuously broken records with her most recent releases—a number of which have been “Taylor’s Version” re-records of earlier released albums. Ahead of this album release, Swift was the only artist to have sold more than 1 million copies of an album in one week six different times, the most recent of which was when she sold 1.359 million copies of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” in its first week. Her Eras Tour, which began in March 2023 and continues through this year, became the first tour to gross more than $1 billion, and the concert film version Swift released in October brought in $180 million at the domestic box office.
We estimate Swift to have a net worth of about $1.1 billion as of Monday afternoon.
