Friday, June 5, 2026

Taylor Swift Will Sell More Copies of New Album This Week Than the Total Top 50 This Week

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Taylor Swift, here to save the record business. Her new album, “1989,” is on track to sell 1 million copies this week. That would make “1989” the only million seller of 2014. It would also mean that the album will sell more copies than the total top 50 sold last week. Even with strong debuts today by Slipknot, Neil Diamond, and Aretha Franklin, the top 50 albums sold on CD or digital download came in just under 1 million total. That’s the state of the business now, with Spotify and other streaming services outstripping actual sales now by huge numbers. If all boats rise with Swift’s success, next Tuesday could be a very happy day in music land. Inaddition to lots of other bad news, U2 sold only 12,055 copies in its second week for “Songs of Innocence.” That kind of sale wouldn’t pay for a pair of Bono’s glasses, let alone The Edge’s Malibu complex of homes.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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