From the second it was announced, it was clear that Taylor Swift’s Reputation was going to be a huge-selling album, for many obvious reasons that don’t need explaining here. This belief was crystallized very early on: It was reported that after only an hour of being available on iTunes, the album sold over 800,000 copies. Now, the numbers are getting even more wild: As Billboard notes, initial sales reports say that Reputation has sold 1.05 million copies in the US in just its first four days of release.
This makes it the first album to sell a million copies in a week since Adele’s 25 moved 1.16 million copies on the week ending December 25th, 2015. Of course, there are still three days left in this sales week, so it seems possible, if not likely, that Reputation surpasses that 1.16 million figure. If we’re comparing Swift and Adele, though, it’s worth noting that while Reputation‘s first-week sales are mighty impressive, they don’t even yet come close to the historic first week 25 had, when it earned an astounding 3.48 million equivalent album units in the week ending on November 26th, 2015.
This million-sales week does give Swift a leg up over Adele in one respect, though: Since Nielsen Music began electronically tracking music sales in 1991, Swift is now the sole artist to have four million-selling weeks. These lofty sales also push Reputation‘s numbers past the the previous top-selling album of 2017: Ed Sheeran’s ÷, which has sold 919,000 copies as of the week ending November 9.
Check out our review of Reputation here.
