Taylor Swift's 'Midnights' Made History Again

Update, 10/31/2022:

Swift has broken another record with Midnights, becoming the first artist in the 64-year history of the Billboard Hot 100 song chart to occupy every single spot in the top 10 at once.

She beat out Drake, who landed nine of the Hot 100’s top 10 spots for a week in September 2021, with Certified Lover Boy. Midnights single “Anti-Hero” has the No. 1 spot, making it her ninth career #1. She now has the most top 10s among women in the chart’s history with 40 (now surpassing Madonna’s 38). She’s behind only Drake, who has 59 top 10s.

The Hot 100 includes all U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data.

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Taylor Swift has had a history-making week. Her tenth studio album, Midnights, has broken several records since it was released on October 21st. Even in the era of streaming dominance, when the days of artists moving 7-comma figures of albums are long-gone, Swift has managed to nab extremely high sales.

According to reporting by several outlets, data from Luminate (which supplies figures for Billboard’s charts), shows that Midnight sold more than 1.2 million album units in the US during its first three days of release alone. This marks the first time an artist has sold more one million records in its opening week since Swift’s own Reputation did so in 2017.

Midnights has also broken several streaming records, including being the most streamed album in 24 hours (184.6 million streams) and the most streamed act on Spotify in 24 hours (228 million streams). The first record was previously held by Drake for his 2021 album Certified Lover Boy, clocking in at 153.4 million streams.

Swift’s Midnights collaboration with Lana Del Rey, the sparkling “Snow On The Beach,” also broke a record, garnering the biggest single-week streams for an all-female collaboration in Spotify history, with 57.484 million streams. (Given the combined power of Swift and Del Rey’s fanbases, that one isn’t too surprising.)

Midnights also broke the record for the biggest pop album of all time on Apple Music by first-day streams.

Luminate shows that over 955,000 units — nearly 80 percent of her album sales — came from digital downloads, CD, cassette and vinyl sales. It helps that Swift is a master at merchandising, and for the Midnights drop, she provided fans extra insensitive to pre-order her project. In addition to t-shirts, eye masks and a branded guitar, Midnights sold about a half a million vinyl copies, a high point even in the current vinyl boom. This was in part due to her encouraging fans to collect four unique vinyl editions, each of which had its own cover art that when put together, looks like a clock.

These numbers will only continue to increase as Swift likely announces and embarks on a new tour, which she’s already teased on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.