Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ Breaks Modern-Era Single-Week U.S. Album Sales Record

It’s official. Two days after Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl set the single-week modern-era consumption record for an album, the project has now broken the modern-era record for the most albums sold in a week in the United States, according to initial reports to data tracking firm Luminate.

The album’s full final first-week consumption figure (equivalent album units, which includes pure sales, streams and track sales) and pure album sales figure are both still being tabulated by Luminate, and won’t be announced until Sunday, Oct. 12. That said, the album already has more than 3.4 million in pure album sales (physical and digital purchases), marking the largest sales week for any album since Luminate began electronically tracking music data in 1991, when the modern era of weekly music tabulation began.

Previously, the modern-era record for single-week sales of an album was held by the opening frame of Adele’s 25, with 3.378 million copies sold in its first week in November 2015.

The Life of a Showgirl was released on Friday, Oct. 3. Luminate’s tracking week that captured the album’s first week ran from Oct. 3 through the end of Oct. 9.

Since Luminate began tracking data in 1991, only three albums have sold at least 2 million copies in a single week in the U.S. Before The Life of a Showgirl achieved the feat, there was the bow of Adele’s 25 and the opening week of *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached in 2000, which sold 2.416 million.

The Life of a Showgirl’s official first-week numbers (equivalent album units, total traditional album sales and streaming figures) reflecting the tracking week of Oct. 3-9, are expected to be announced by Billboard on Sunday, Oct. 12, along with its assumed large debut on the multimetric Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Oct. 18). Luminate’s streaming, sales and airplay data powers Billboard’s charts. All numbers cited in this story are for the U.S. only.

Life of a Showgirl’s first-week sales were fueled by 34 different versions of The Life of a Showgirl — 27 physical iterations (18 CDs, eight vinyl LPs and one cassette) and seven download variants (not counting clean and explicit editions for wide digital retail).

Helping the sales The Life of a Showgirl in the last few days of the tracking week were four new iTunes Store-exclusive editions of the album that sold for $4.99 each, and for 24-hours only. They were issued one a day, starting Monday, through Thursday, and all are adaptations of the four limited-edition CDs that Swift released in her webstore over the weekend. The CDs each had the album’s 12 songs, plus two unique bonus tracks (acoustic/alternative versions of songs on the album). The iTunes Store versions carry the same tracklists as the CDs, but the iTunes versions add two unique voice memos to each album.

Those limited-edition CDs that were previously locked to Swift’s webstore were later made available during the week to independent record shops.

Finally, on Thursday, Swift’s webstore dropped a digital download version of the album, dubbed The Life of a Showgirl (So Punk on the Internet Version) with the album’s 12 songs and six previously released voice memos, plus one new voice memo.

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