Update: Taylor Swift’s “1989” is officially a member of the 4 million sales club.
According to final Soundscan data, the blockbuster album commanded a weekly sales total of 92,196. Enough for a #2 slot on the album sales chart behind Meghan Trainor’s “Title,” the weekly figure boosts the album’s cumulative sales mark to 4.036 million.
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While it did not rank as this past week’s best-selling album, Taylor Swift’s “1989” achieved something even more special.
The singer-songwriter’s fifth studio album reached a cumulative US sales total in excess of 4 million. And it did so four times as quickly as any previous Swift release.
Per Hits Daily Double, “1989” was purchased approximately 92,102 times during the week ending January 18. As a result, “1989” now claims a release-to-date sales total of roughly 4.04 million.
Billboard’s more authoritative data will differ slightly from that reported by Hits, but the margin of error will not be enough to change the reality: Taylor Swift has sold more than 4 million US copies of “1989.”
“1989,” which required only two months to register as 2014’s best-selling album, crossed the 4 million mark after only 12 weeks of release. The fastest to achieve the milestone since Usher’s “Confessions,” the album reached 4 million at a rate unrivaled by any of Swift’s previous four albums.
Sophomore album “Fearless,” which was previously her fastest-moving release, needed 50 weeks to reach 4 million. Third and fourth albums “Speak Now” and “Red” each needed 69 weeks to get to four million, while Swift’s self-titled debut achieved the milestone after 125 frames.