“The Tortured Poets Department” is the biggest album of 2024 so far

Taylor Swift The Department of Tortured Poets has sold more copies than any other album this year so far, and it’s not particularly close according to data from Luminate’s mid-year report released Tuesday morning.

Counting pure sales only, The Department of Tortured Poets sold 2.474 million copies in the first half of 2024. Hit me hard and soft took second place with around 306,000 copies sold, and Beyoncé Carter the cowboy came in third with around 257,000 sales. The rest of the top 10 included four more Swift albums as well as Tomorrow X Together Minisode 3: Tomorrow, who took sixth place, Ateez’s The Golden Hour: Part One in the seventh, and Twice With yourself taking ninth place. These other nine albums have combined to sell around 1.924 million units, about half a million less than TTPD.

Part of this success is attributable to the many and different TTPD Swift has released more than three dozen albums, dwarfing her more than a dozen. Swift has been criticized by some critics and fans online who have argued that the volume of her releases is an exploitation of her devoted fan base, or that it is part of a clumsy chart strategy to prevent other albums from dethroning her.

Luminate highlighted the rise of physical album variants in particular in its report Tuesday, noting that the trend began to increase about four years ago. This year’s top 10 best-selling physical albums so far have included about seven different vinyl variants, 13 CDs and two cassettes, Luminate said. Eilish called the practice “wasteful” in an interview with Billboard earlier this year. Swift’s fans dismissed the claim, and Eilish later clarified that she wasn’t denouncing any specific artist but was calling attention to the strategy as a whole.

“As for the variants, a lot of artists are posting them — including ME! Which I make clear in the article,” Eilish said in April. “The climate crisis is here and it’s about all of us being part of the problem and trying to do better. Fucking hell.”

While Swift is racking up impressive sales, her latest album is also a streaming juggernaut. With 2.753 billion streams, The Department of Tortured Poets holds 500 million stream lead over Morgan Wallen One thing at a time as the most-streamed album in the United States in the first half of 2024.

Between sales and streams, The Department of Tortured Poets totaled 4.66 million album-equivalent units in the first half of the year, according to Luminate. One thing at a time took second place with 1.776 million, followed by Noah Kahan Stick season in third place with 1.224 million. Carter the cowboy is in fourth place with 1.105 million, and SZA SOS came in fifth with 1.064 million.

On the individual song side, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” is the most-streamed song of the year in the first half of 2024, with 1.434 billion streams worldwide. Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” is the second most-streamed song with 1.117 billion streams, while “Cruel Summer” takes third place with just over 1 billion streams. In the US alone, “Beautiful Things” remains at number one with 448 million streams, while Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves’ “I Remember Everything” is second with 437.3 million streams. “Lose Control” takes third place with 409.7 million streams.

Luminate’s report also includes data on live music as well as the fastest-growing music genres in the U.S. Sixty-four percent of all monthly music spending comes from live music, Luminate said. Latin music, led by Música Mexicana, is the fastest-growing music genre in the U.S. in terms of audio streams, according to Luminate, followed by rock, pop and country.