When could Taylor Swift beat sales record with ‘The Tortured Poets Department’?

Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, is on course to record historically large numbers when its full sales figures are confirmed later this week.

The music industry is awaiting the release of the latest Billboard 200 chart, which ranks each week’s most popular albums in the United States. The next Billboard 200, which draws on figures compiled by the data tracking firm Luminate, is due out on Sunday 28 April.

How many copies has Tortured Poets Department sold so far?

On Tuesday, Billboard revealed that The Tortured Poets Department had sold 2.1 million units in the first four days since its release last Friday. That already made it Swift’s most successful opening week ever, and the largest first week by any album since Adele’s 25 premiered with just under 3.4 million units sold in November 2015.

Billboard added on Tuesday that The Tortured Poets Department stood fifth on the all-time list of the biggest ever debut sales weeks - led by Adele’s 25 - since Luminate began compiling data in 1991.

What counts as a unit in album sales?

According to Billboard, “each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.”

Swift’s streaming success

In terms of pure streaming figures, meanwhile, Billboard noted on Tuesday that tracks on the The Tortured Poets Department had amassed 602.3 million on-demand official streams in the US, beating Swift’s own record for the biggest streaming week by an album released by a female artist.

In October 2022, Swift’s album Midnights set the previous record by accruing 549.3 million on-demand streams.

Swift drops surprise extra tracks

Swift’s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department was initially slated to be a 16-song record, but the 34-year-old surprised fans on the day of its release by dropping a two-part, anthology edition with 31 tracks.

“I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” the 14-time Grammy winner wrote on social media. “So here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.”