Swift’s ‘Reputation’ sells 1.2 million copies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Taylor Swift is still selling albums like it's 2014 -- or, for her, 2012 or even 2010.

Swift's latest, "Reputation" (Big Machine), has become the pop singer's fourth consecutive release -- after "1989," "Red" and "Speak Now" -- to move more than 1 million copies in its first week, debuting with a total of 1,216,000 albums sold, according to Nielsen Music. With streaming and downloads of individual songs factored in, "Reputation" ends its first week with the equivalent of 1,238,000 in sales by the industry's current formula.

In addition to an easy Billboard No. 1 -- Nielsen said "Reputation" sold more than the rest of this week's Billboard 200 chart combined -- this marks the best opening week for any album this year, topping Drake's "More Life" (OVO/Republic). It also makes "Reputation," right off the bat, the biggest-selling release of 2017 over Ed Sheeran's "÷" (Atlantic). The platinum-selling week for "Reputation" is also the first since Adele's "25," which had 3 million-plus sales weeks in late 2015.

Swift, 27, did it largely the semi-old-fashioned way: Because the full album was not made available on streaming services, it sold most of its copies through digital download -- a fading format -- and even some as hard-copy CDs thanks to promotions including Taylor-centric UPS trucks and bundles with custom "Reputation" magazines at Target. (Of the 925,000 copies the album sold in its first three days, more than 600,000 were downloads.)

Fans were also alerted to a promotion in which owning multiple copies of the album could boost the odds of buying concert tickets to Swift's upcoming stadium tour, a system meant to thwart scalpers that also happened to boost sales. The debut of "Reputation" is Swift's second-best sales week ever, just short of the 1,287,000 copies her previous album, "1989," sold in its first week in 2014.

While "Reputation" has yet to find its way to Spotify, Apple Music and the like -- an increasingly rare move also pulled off by Adele, who kept "25" from streaming for seven months -- four advance songs from Swift's album remained available to stream, and that counted toward its total. Those tracks -- "Look What You Made Me Do," "...Ready for It?," "Gorgeous" and "Call It What You Want" -- logged a combined 20.1 million plays. (By contrast, the week's most streamed song, according to Nielsen, was Lil Pump's "Gucci Gang" with 42.9 million streams.)

Now the question is staying power. Sales of "1989" dropped 69 percent in its second week, to 402,000 copies, but the album managed to notch a total of 11 weeks at No. 1 through 2015.