Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” set a new record by earning 3.5 million equivalent album units since its release on Friday, Billboard reported citing numbers from Luminate on Wednesday, but critics argue that Swift has released an excessive number of “exclusive” versions of the album to help her achieve the feat.
Key data
Swift’s album surpassed Adele’s 10-year-old chart record, “25,” in just five days of its release, Billboard reported, and the number will continue to rise.
The achievement comes at a time when Swift is drawing criticism from some fans who say she has used the release of the “Life of a Showgirl” album to shamelessly chase industry records, having teamed up with tech giants Apple and Google to promote the album and unveiling more than two dozen “exclusive” variations of the same record.
The album had 23 different physical and digital variants when it was first released (with different covers and exclusive elements like poems, voice notes and acoustic tracks) and that number had grown to almost 30 by Wednesday.
Some variants were only available for a limited time: “The Life of a Showgirl (DELUXE Alone In My Tower Acoustic Version)” was available on iTunes for 24 hours only, and others were exclusive to certain retailers (two were available only on iTunes and several CDs and a vinyl edition were exclusive to Target).
Some specialists have criticized the artist for what they consider promoting excessive consumption and exploitation of her followers.
What to pay attention to
Another record is broken. Adele still holds the record for album sales — not counting streaming or other consumption — but Billboard reports that Swift is just 180,000 album sales away from reaching the record (3.378 million) and will likely surpass that number before the week is out. Billboard is expected to announce first-week numbers for “The Life of a Showgirl” on Sunday, along with its supposed debut on the Billboard 200 chart.
2.6 million. That was the number of album units Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” earned in its first week, a record for the artist at the time.
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What is an equivalent album unit?
According to Billboard, one equivalent album unit is equivalent to the sale of one album, the sale of 10 individual songs on an album, or 3,750 official ad-supported audio and video streams or 1,250 paid/subscription streams generated by songs on an album. (None of the songs on ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ are available for individual purchase, so there are currently no song sales contributing to its total sales.)
Key background
“The Life of a Showgirl” is Swift’s twelfth studio album. She announced the new album in August and gave more details, including the title, during her guest appearance on “New Heights,” the sports podcast co-hosted by her now-fiancé Travis Kelce. The album consists of 12 songs and was described by the New York Times as “Swift’s conscious return to pure pop.” The first song from the album, “The Fate of Ophelia,” is the most streamed song from the album on Spotify to date, with 85.3 million listens as of Wednesday afternoon.
Forbes Rating
Swift, the first musician to appear on the billionaire rankings based primarily on her songs and performances, is worth an estimated $1.6 billion, making her the 2,377th richest person in the world.
This article was originally published on Forbes US.
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