Swift fever was fueled by her Eras tour, which ended last year as by far the highest-grossing concert tour on record, selling just over $2 billion in tickets for 149 shows. On Monday, Swift announced two tour-related projects coming to Disney+: “The End of an Era,” a six-episode documentary series about the development and “inner workings” of the tour, with two episodes airing per week, starting Dec. 12, and “The Final Show,” a concert film from the tour’s final date, in Vancouver, British Columbia, also arriving Dec. 12.
The equivalent sales figure attributed to “Showgirl” is a composite that incorporates the album’s popularity on streaming services as well as purchases of the full album. An analysis of these numbers illustrates how Swift has dominated all available formats.
The album sold 3,479,500 copies as a complete package on CD, vinyl, downloads and even cassette. In the age of streaming, crossing the million mark in sales has become a rare accomplishment: So far this year, the biggest non-Taylor Swift sales figure for traditional sales is the Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” with just over 500,000. Moving a million people in a single week is a feat achievable by a vanishing few. Aside from Swift or Adele, the last artist to do so was Lady Gaga, who sold 1,108,000 copies of “Born This Way” in May 2011, just before Spotify arrived in the United States.
“Showgirl” sold 1,334,000 copies last week in vinyl form, breaking a modern-era record for first-week sales set by Swift herself last year, when she sold 859,000 vinyl copies of “The Tortured Poets Department.”
As has become her signature style in recent years, Swift has sold multiple editions of her album. By the end of the week, there were 38 total, according to Billboard, including 27 physical iterations (18 CD versions, eight vinyls and one cassette). There were also 11 downloadable versions, selling for as little as $4.99 and coming with bonus features like acoustic tracks and samples of Swift’s “voice memo” recording drafts.
