Not only is Taylor Swift‘s new album Red very good, it’s also jaw-droppingly successful — having just earned Swift the best single-week sales sales in a decade. Billboard revealed today that Swift’s Red sold 1.208 million copies in the US last week, which is the most any album has sold in one week since Eminem‘s The Eminem Show moved 1.322 million units back in 2002.
That’s not the only significant milestone. Red also earned Swift the second-best sales week ever for a female artist, bested only by Britney Spears, who sold 1.319 million copies of Oops! … I Did It Again in 2000. Of course, Red also debuted at #1. (That probably goes without saying.)
Swift’s album actually came out ahead of projections, due to record-breaking sales at iTunes, an exclusive deluxe edition partnership with Target and several additional marketing ventures.
In a rapidly shifting music industry where million-unit weeks are few and far between, Red marks the first album in more than a year to shift over a million copies in a week — the last was Lady Gaga‘s Born This Way — but, as Billboard points out, Red’s massive sales didn’t require any discount sale pricing, with the lowest purchase price set at $9.99. Gaga’s album, on the other hand, was sold at 99 cents on Amazon MP3 during its release week, which caused so much controversy in the industry that Billboard actually changed their policies regarding discount pricing.
Loving him may be Red, but right now, we’re guessing that Swift is rolling in the green.
[via Billboard]
Yay for overrated artists!