The 31-track LP sold 1.4 million copies on its first day.
Taylor Swift
Beth Garrabrant
Taylor Swift was aiming for a truly epic release week long before The Department of Tortured Poets actually dropped, the pop star surprised fans by releasing 31 new songs – up from the previously confirmed 16 main tracks and four bonus tracks – in the space of two hours on April 19.
She had been working on the sprawling project, produced by Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, for about two years before it finally came to fruition, with the singer telling fans at an Eras Tour concert in February that she had been working on it since the time she submitted the project. Billboard tops 200 Midnights to her label in 2022. The inevitable news cycle about her breakups with longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn and The 1975’s Matty Healy, as well as her blossoming romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, n only fueled the fire of media hype leading to Tortured poetswhich Swift further fueled by saying at another Eras concert: “I’ve never had an album where I needed to write songs so much.”
On April 19, her inimitable lyricism, discourse-provoking compositions and apparent allusions to the aforementioned relationships proved more than enough to attract millions of listeners, with the 14-time Grammy winner breaking records left and right in the process. Before Tortured poets even hit the Billboard On the charts, it was achieving unprecedented numbers in streaming, sales and vinyl releases – not to mention selling 1.4 million copies on its first day on sale, according to Luminate – giving Swift’s peers a bang for their buck in more ways than one.
Keep reading to see all the major records The Department of Tortured Poets broke – so far – below.
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Spotify’s Most Pre-Recorded Countdown
Before Tortured poets was even released, its countdown page on Spotify broke the streaming service’s record for the most pre-saves in history. The countdown launched on March 28, two weeks before the album’s release date, inviting Swifties to watch every second tick by.
Spotify has also continually updated the tab with links to the pop star’s merchandise as well as cryptic videos of Swift printing out the LP’s lyrics with a typewriter.
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Vinyl sales over a week
Of Tortured poets 1.5 million sales in the first week, of which 700,000 copies were on vinyl. This breaks Swift’s record for the biggest sales week of an album on vinyl in the modern era, or since Luminate began tracking the data in 1991, breaking 693,000 copies sold. 1989 (Taylor version) in its first week in 2023.
Ahead of its release, Tay announced four vinyl variants of Tortured poets – “The Manuscript”, “The Albatross”, “The Bolter” and “The Black Dog” – each containing all 16 songs from the album’s main tracklist plus one bonus song.
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Single-day Spotify album stream
Not only Tortured poets becoming Spotify’s most streamed album in a single day in history in less than 12 hours after its release, it also became the platform’s first album to accumulate over 300 million streams in a single day.
The streaming service’s previous single-day record was Beyoncé, whose Cowboy Carter garnered 300.41 million official on-demand streams in its first full week of release.
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Single day Spotify song stream
Likewise, the opening track of The Department of Tortured Poets – “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone – broke Spotify’s record for the most streams a song has ever garnered in one day.
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Pop Albums Apple Music
Apple Music also shared this The Department of Tortured Poets had broken its record for the biggest pop album of all time in terms of first-day airplay shortly after the LP’s release.
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Fastest album with 1 billion streams on Spotify
Just five days later TTP was released, it became the first album in Spotify history to surpass 1 billion streams in a single week. It is now the fastest album in history to reach this milestone.
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The biggest streaming week ever
During its first six days on the market, Tortured poets became the most streamed album in a single week with 799 million streams across all platforms, surpassing Drake’s previous record of 745.92 million with his 2018 LP. Scorpioaccording to Luminate.
