The Billboard 200 chart ranks the week’s most popular albums based on their overall consumption. That overall unit figure combines pure album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Let’s take a closer look at some of the action on the chart:
— Taylor Swift, 1989 – No. 2 — Taylor Swift’s 1989 sold its 4 millionth copy in the week ending Jan. 18, as the set’s cumulative sales rose to 4,036,000 in the week. (It sold an addition 92,000 copies in the frame ending Jan. 18.) Each of Swift’s five full-length studio albums have now sold at least 4 million. Her biggest seller is 2008’s Fearless (6.9 million), followed by her self-titled debut (5.5 million), 2010’sSpeak Now (4.5 million), Red (4.1 million) and then 1989. In total, Swift has sold 27.1 million albums in the U.S.
1989 is the first album to sell 4 million copies since Swift herself did it almost exactly a year ago with a different album. In the week ending Feb. 23, 2014, Swift’s previous release, Red, crossed the 4 million mark.