Buy This Album. Now Buy It in Green.

"The news that Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl has recorded the biggest sales week for any album ever is an astonishing milestone in the annals of e-commerce. Swift's fame ensured that the album would be a hit no matter what, but moving more than 3.5 million units in seven days required high-pressure sales techniques more common to mattress retailers than musicians. The feat testifies to one of the strangest aspects of modern music: the way that popularity has become part of the performance."

"As streaming slowly became the public's preferred way of listening to records, the medium complicated the traditional definition of success. An album having 100 plays could mean one person played it 100 times, or 100 people played it once. In either case, the artist is making a lot less money than they would from 100 album sales. In late 2014, the music industry started counting album equivalent units, a composite metric that accounts for streaming and sales."

Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl sold more than 3.5 million units in seven days, the largest single-week total in history. Achieving that figure required aggressive, high-pressure sales techniques more common to mattress retailers than musicians. Popularity functioned as part of the performance rather than merely a byproduct. Adele previously held the record with 3.38 million copies of 25 in 2015, a time before streaming dominated listening habits. The industry adopted album-equivalent units in late 2014 to combine sales and streams while weighting physical and digital sales far more heavily than streams. Major pop stars initially resisted streaming and sometimes withheld catalogs to protect sales revenue.

Read at The Atlantic