What Year Is It? Taylor Swift's Red Sells More Than A Million Units

News
By
published

It might be a struggle for most musicians to sell albums nowadays, but apparently, Taylor Swift doesn’t have such problems. We all knew her new album Red would debut at number one on the Billboard charts, but there was plenty of disagreement as to how many units might be sold. The figures have finally been tallied, and it seems Red was purchased by 1.208 million people. That’s the highest debut since The Eminem Show in 2002 and an incredible accomplishment given the current state of the music industry.

According to Billboard, Swift’s accomplishment is all the more impressive because no retailers sold copies for under $9.99. A little more than a year ago, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way topped a million too, but apparently, those sales figures were buoyed by Amazon MP3 offering the unit for $.99.

The music business has evolved more between The Eminem Show and Red than perhaps any other time in its history. Ten years ago, Swift probably would have moved two million units at minimum. People would have been lined up around the block to purchase the CD at Circuit City. Luckily, no matter how much the music business changes, the thrill of listening to a great song for the first time never changes.

Here’s to hoping everyone who purchased Red this week sat down with the music and got something truly beautiful and fulfilling out of the time and money spent.

TOPICS
Mack Rawden
Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.