On Oct 27th, Taylor Swift released her album 1989 (Taylor’s Version).
According to reports from Luminate, a system that tracks sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has sold over one million copies in the U.S in the first five days of release. This album has surpassed Swift’s 2022 release Midnights, which sold 778,000 copies.
The release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is part of Swift’s re-recording of her first six albums that she does not have the rights to. The ownership of her first six albums was transferred to Scooter Braun in 2019 when he bought Swift’s former label. By re-recording her albums, Swift is able to gain the masters rights for her songs, meaning she gains profit for the songs that she never received royalties from, since she didn’t own them.
1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the fourth album Swift has re-recorded to take ownership of her music. The album contains all the original tracks that dominated charts in 2014, such as “Shake it Off” and “Blank Space.” The album also includes “vault tracks” that were written in the same era but were not included in the original 1989 album.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the original 1989 album sold nine million copies in the United States and won the 58th Grammy Award for Album of the Year. But nine years later, it’s difficult to overstate Swift’s near-total saturation of popular culture.
With the release of 1989 (Taylors Version), Swift has sold at least a million albums in a single week for the sixth time. According to Billboard, she is the only artist that has accomplished this since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991.
