Taylor Swift‘s “The Life of a Showgirl” now officially has a claim to the biggest first-week numbers ever recorded for an album. Billboard reported Wednesday that, in its first five days out, the album has surpassed 3.5 million equivalent album units, representing consumption across both sales and streaming.
That breaks the record previously held by Adele‘s “25,” which bowed with 3.482 million units in December 2015 chart, a high-water mark that has stood for just two months shy of a decade.
Swift broke the record in five days, meaning her tally will rise further still in the two days remaining in the chart week.
The record for actual album sales, sans streaming or other consumption, continues to be held by Adele — but probably only for about a minute. Billboard reported that sales of the full “Showgirl” album stood at 3.2 million at the end of the fifth day, just a hair shy of the 3.378 million that “25” sold during its first week in 2015. (For both albums, sales account for the vast majority of the overall unit tallies.)
Swift’s sales may have been frontloaded with pre-orders that officially counted on the first day of release. But she has been ensuring that the album is not flagging on that front in the later part of the sales week. She has issued several CD or digital variants during the week with acoustic bonus tracks, the latest of which was a download exclusive that was put up for sale in her webstore for a 24-hour period beginning Tuesday afternoon.
Under normal circumstances, Luminate does not report album tallies during the week, and there are no updated official figures until the top 10 of the Billboard 200 is released each Sunday, with attendant unit figures. But interest in the records to be broken has had the chart data company issuing more frequent reports, in this case.
Swift has certainly soared above her own previous record for equivalent album units in a single week. Her best debut to date was 2.61 million for “The Tortured Poets Department” last year, a figure she has already surpassed by a 600,000-unit margin in just five days.
Some forecasters have wondered whether “Showgirl” could even hit the wild mark of 4 million by the time the chart week is up, but even a figure in the high 3s will be a new benchmark few thought possible before the Eras Tour pushed Swift into an even higher stratosphere.
These “all-time” figures count album consumption since the advent of modern record-keeping in 1991, when Soundscan began keeping reliable weekly tallies, something that did not exist in previous decades. Luminate is the successor to Soundscan.
The No. 1 that Swift will soon register for “The Life of a Showgirl” will quickly follow the No. 1 that she had at the nation’s box office with “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” which made $33 million in theaters over its limited three-day run, at a $12 across-the-board ticketing price point.
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