When the original “1989” came out, it was not available on streaming services. Swift was then one of a number of prominent holdouts who kept her music off the new format, over concerns about its financial model. Since then, of course, streaming has taken over the music business, and Swift has long since made her music available on all major platforms. But “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” still outperformed the original in old-fashioned sales, thanks in part to her canny marketing of collectible physical media — a strategy now widely used across the pop world, but perhaps most effectively by Swift, the rapper Travis Scott and an array of K-pop acts.
Of the 1,653,000 “equivalent album units” attributed to the new “1989” — a composite number that Billboard and its data partner, Luminate, use to reconcile sales and streams — 1,359,000 were for sales of albums, surpassing the total for the original “1989.” The new album sold 693,000 copies on vinyl, the largest week of sales for that format since at least 1991. It also surpasses Swift’s own vinyl record of 575,000 for “Midnights,” a year ago.
“1989 (Taylor’s Version)” sold 554,000 copies on CD, the biggest weekly number on that format since Adele’s “25.” According to Billboard, the new “1989” was available in 15 versions on physical formats, including five colored vinyl variants, eight CDs and two cassettes.
In addition, “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” had 375 million streams, the most in a single week for any of Swift’s four rerecorded albums.
Also this week, the K-pop ensemble Seventeen opens at No. 2 with “Seventeenth Heaven,” an eight-track release that the group calls its 11th “mini-album,” which sold 98,000 copies on CD. Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 3, Bad Bunny’s “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” is No. 4 and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” holds at No. 5.
