“two years ago, Swift’s ‘Reputation’ set the record for the biggest ever U.S. sales week by traditional album sales with 1.216 million copies sold. ‘Midnights’ surpassed this record in just four days.”

Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” may have left the indie-folk lovers of her previous albums disappointed, but breaking several sales and streaming records within its release week, including taking all of the top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, Swift’s tenth album is her biggest success yet, breaking the record for largest overall week for any album, by equivalent album units, within just four days.

“The results speak for themselves. She’s as popular as she’s ever been,” said Berklee College of Music’s music business professor George Howard. “She creates this kind of frenzy among a significant amount of fans.”Five years ago, Swift’s “Reputation” achieved the biggest ever U.S. sales week by traditional album sales with 1.216 million copies sold. “Midnights” topped this record in just four days.It’s not like Swift’s previous albums weren’t successful. Rather, her number of streams have consistently grown over the years as the streaming industry has captured more of the music listener market share. Last fall, “Red (Taylor’s Version)” reached 90.8 million streams within its release day and broke Spotify’s record for the most-streamed album in a day by a female artist.The

previous record was 78.7 million streams — held by Swift’s “Folklore.” With “Midnights,” Swift broke her own record again, reaching 185 million streams on its release day.What is it about “Midnights” that has made it the pop star’s biggest success yet, and why did it take Swift four more new albums to break her own record?In her acceptance speech for Video of the Year award for “All Too Well (10 minute version) (Taylor’s version) (from The Vault,)”

at the VMAs in August, Swift surprised the world by announcing that she was releasing her brand new album “Midnights” on Oct. 21. Fans expected Swift’s next release to be another re-recording of one of her previous albums, as her past two albums were re-recordings with “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” released in April 2021 and “Red (Taylor’s Version)” in Nov. 2021. The fact that she broke this release pattern and announced a new album at an awards show, something she’s never done before, created a lot of initial buzz around “Midnights.