![\"Night](\"https:\/\/imageio.forbes.com\/specials-images\/imageserve\/668d5ca1622c397cce3cf290\/Night-Two-Of-Taylor-Swift---The-Eras-Tour---Amsterdam--Netherlands\/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1440\")
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Taylor Swift\u2019s\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department\u00a0debuted on the\u00a0Billboard\u00a0charts one year ago this week \u2014 and what a debut it was. The full-length arrived with record-breaking numbers across virtually every metric the company tracks, from pure sales to streaming totals to total vinyl dominance. Now, 52 weeks later, the set is still found on two tallies: the Billboard 200, where it sits at No. 16, and the Top Streaming Albums chart, where it lifts slightly and settles at No. 13, after previously conquering both rosters.<\/p>\n
In honor of its one-year anniversary on the\u00a0Billboard<\/em>\u00a0rankings, here\u2019s a look back at\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department<\/em>\u2019s blockbuster first week \u2014 one that helped redefine what a commercial music launch could look like in the modern era.<\/p>\n In its first frame,\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department<\/em>\u00a0opened with 2.61 million equivalent album units in America alone. That stands out as the second-largest debut in the history of the Billboard 200. The only album to ever start with a more impressive sum was Adele\u2019s\u00a025<\/em>, which bowed with 3.48 million back in 2015.<\/p>\n That massive figure includes all forms of consumption \u2014 sales, streams, and track equivalents (fans buying some songs from the project, but not all of them, which are compiled together to create album \u201cunits\u201d). In an era when album launches rarely top 500,000 units, Swift\u2019s opening sum was nearly unheard of.<\/p>\n Out of that 2.61 million total, a staggering 1.914 million were pure purchases, either digital or physical. That\u2019s the third-largest sales week since Luminate began tracking purchases carefully and more directly in 1991.\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department<\/em>\u00a0trails behind only\u00a025\u00a0<\/em>(2.433 million)\u00a0<\/em>and NSYNC\u2019s\u00a0No Strings Attached\u00a0<\/em>(2.4 million). For context, the majority of chart-topping albums today don\u2019t even reach six figures in sales.<\/p>\n Of those traditional sales, 859,000 were vinyl copies. That number allowed Swift to break her own record for the biggest vinyl sales week\u00a0in the modern era. That record previously belonged to\u00a01989 (Taylor\u2019s Version), which had moved 693,000 copies on wax just a few months prior. Swift holds most of the biggest vinyl sales weeks ever in America.<\/p>\n Beyond physical and digital sales,\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department<\/em>\u00a0was also hugely successful on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. The project pulled in 891.34 million on-demand audio streams in its debut seven-day tracking week, breaking the all-time record for the largest U.S. streaming period for an album. The previous record-holder, Drake\u2019s\u00a0Scorpion<\/em>, had opened with 745.92 million back in 2018. Shockingly, Swift beat that sum by more than 140 million streams. The title\u2019s lengthy tracklist \u2013 the first edition featured 16 songs, while the Anthology version includes a total of 31 \u2013 surely played a role in its ability to shatter this record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taylor Swift\u2019s\u00a0The Tortured Poets Department\u00a0debuted on the\u00a0Billboard\u00a0charts one year ago this week \u2014 and what a debut it was. The full-length arrived with record-breaking numbers across virtually… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-taylor-swifts"],"yoast_head":"\nA Monumental Debut<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Traditional Album Sales Record<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Taylor Swift Smashed the Vinyl Record (Again)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Biggest Streaming Week of All Time<\/strong><\/h2>\n