Nobody Can Beat Taylor Swift When It Comes To Selling Vinyl
Taylor Swift's 'Midnights' is bound to become one of the largest releases in recent memory, and its opening week is one for the history books.
Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights has only been out for a few days, but already the title is making history left and right.
It’s bound to become one of the largest releases in recent memory, and its opening week is surely going to be one for the books.
It seems the singer-songwriter can’t fail in nearly anything she does in music, and now she’s shattered one more record, blowing every other artist away.
Billboard reports that just one day after Midnights became available to purchase on all formats, it has broken the all-time record for the largest vinyl sales week in U.S. history.
That’s right–in 24 hours, Swift’s latest album had already logged enough purchases to score the biggest seven-day total when it comes to wax, and there’s still plenty of time to go for the set to continue to rack up sales.
The music magazine reports that Midnights had already sold a whopping 400,000 copies on vinyl by its second day out in the world.
That’s easily enough for Swift to claim the No. 1 album on next week’s Billboard 200 chart, even if the music wasn’t available to consume in any other fashion.
Let’s put that 400,000 vinyl sales sum into some further perspective.
This week’s No. 1 album in the U.S., Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me, debuts atop the Billboard 200 with 216,000 equivalent copies moved. That figure includes sales on any format, as well as a massive number of streams. Swift nearly doubled the rapper’s total with only vinyl, which until a few years ago many assumed was long gone.
Before Midnights came along, a new record for the largest vinyl sales week was set earlier this year. Harry Styles’ most recent release, Harry’s House, was purchased by 182,000 fans on vinyl in its introductory frame this spring. Swift more than doubled that impressive figure in just a day.
It’s worth mentioning that before Harry’s House grabbed that piece of history, the previous record holder for the largest vinyl sales frame in America was none other than Swift. Her re-recording Red (Taylor’s Version) sold 114,000 copies on vinyl when it was first released in November 2021.
It’s worth mentioning that Swift announced her album weeks ago, and it was quickly made available for pre-order. All of those advance purchases count toward her first week’s sales sum, as long as the records ship and the orders are fulfilled in time. That means fans have been buying the vinyl album for some time, and all that activity is lumped together into one huge and historic showing.
Midnights is headed straight for the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, which Billboard should refresh in about a week. The predictions for its debut sum keep rising, with music industry publication HitsDailyDouble suggesting the full-length could launch atop the tally with as many as 1.5 million equivalent units.
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