The Swift Way to One Million

Taylor Swift’s Red, which hit stores Monday (Oct. 22), is headed for a very big first week sales debut in excess of one million units. In doing so, Swift will become the first female in the SoundScan era to have two albums sell in excess of one million units in a week.

According to Billboard, the Big Machine star’s fourth studio album surpassed sales of 500,000 in its first day. That total includes a 160,000 unit boost from Target, which got exclusive dibs on the album’s deluxe version and set a store record in the process.

Sales for Red have been pumped up through a variety of innovative brand partnerships, including Papa John’s and Walgreens, both of whom are offering the album for sale. The iTunes store got the first week exclusive digital sales of Red, which has not yet been released to Amazon MP3 or Google Play. In contrast to Mumford & Sons’ Babel, which recently broke a one week streaming record on Spotify while selling 600k first week units, Red is not currently available on any streaming services.

Swift’s third album Speak Now debuted in Nov. 2010 with first week sales of 1.047 million. Since then, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way is the only album to hit the first week million sales mark (with 1.108 million units sold), thanks in part to a 99 cent Amazon mp3 promotion. Swift will join the Backstreet Boys, ‘NSync, and Eminem as the only artists to have had two albums eclipse one million sold in a week.