Taylor Swift Beats Adele’s Single-Week Album Sales Record, But Adele Still Holds the Crown for Actual Physical Albums Sold—For Now

Taylor Swift’s new album secures the record for the biggest first-week sales numbers for an album ever, with 3.5 million units sold in five days.

That’s another record broken for Taylor Swift with her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl. Only five days since the album’s debut, it has surpassed 3.5 million equivalent album units, which represent consumption across sales and streaming. That breaks the record previously held by Adele’s 25, which had just under 3.5 million units sold during its first week in December 2015.

Swift was able to break that record in only five days—which means her total numbers will only continue to rise as the week finishes out.

Notably, Adele still holds the record for actual physical album sales, not counting streaming or other consumption. But Taylor is well on her way to smashing that record, too; Luminate says the non-digital sales of The Life of a Showgirl stood at 3.2 million at the end of the fifth day. That’s just slightly behind the 3.378 million that 25 sold during its first week back in 2015.

Of course, Taylor’s sales have been inflated by pre-orders, which officially counted on the first day of release. But her physical sales will only continue to grow, as the star issued several CD variants during the week, many of which sold out in the first 24 hours of being available.

Overall, Swift has soared above her own previous records for album units sold in a single week. Her previous best was 2.61 million for last year’s The Tortured Poets Department—a number she has already surpassed by over 600,000 units in just five days.

These sales figures, which come from Luminate, count album consumption since the beginning of modern record-keeping, established in 1991 by Soundscan. Prior to Soundscan’s weekly tallies, such numbers were not recorded in the industry. Luminate is the successor to Soundscan.