Taylor Swift has gone straight to Number One in America, with her new album ‘1989’ breaking numerous US sales records.
Billboard reports that the album sold 1.287m copies in the US is its first week on sale, making it the best selling album since 2002 when Eminem sold over 1.3m copies of ‘The Eminem Show’. The sales figures make ‘1989’ the biggest selling album released in 2014 and the second most popular album of the year so far, behind the Frozen soundtrack (released in November 2013).
Prior to the release of ‘1989’ no album by an artist had reached platinum status in the US in 2014. The album is the 19th album to sell over 1m copies in America since Nielsen SoundScan began taking records in 1991. Two of the previous 18 already belonged to Swift with her 2012 album ‘Red’ and 2010’s ‘Speak Now’.
It is sales figures like these that have allowed Swift to remove her music from Spotify this week, a move that saw the streaming service beg for her return.
Spotify broke the news that she has now removed the rest of her music from the service in a blog post entitled “On Taylor Swift’s Decision To Remove Her Music from Spotify” today. The company begged Swift to come back and emphasised its belief that fans should be free to listen to music however they want.
Meanwhile, Swift recently announced a trio of UK live dates as part of her ‘1989’ world tour.
Taylor Swift will play:
Glasgow SSE Hydro (June 23)
Manchester Arena (24)
London British Summer Time Hyde Park (27)
To check the availability of Taylor Swift tickets and get all the latest listings, head to NME.COM/tickets.