Elite 100: Taylor Swift Stands Alone With 738,200 Album Sales

Taylor Swift’s latest album, Lover, fueled her 738,200 album sales for the week ending Aug. 29, pushing her to a total of 958,000 total album units, towering over all other Elite 100 Artists chart entries.

Swift’s numbers are remarkable, specifically because so many people paid for the physical or digital copies of her music. For context, the Jonas Brothers sold 408,200 copies of Happiness Begins the first week after a six year hiatus and Billie Eilish sold 379,700 the week her WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? debuted. 

Tay-Tay led the chart in every category, following up her 738,200 album sales with 150,300 song sales and 275.1 million on-demand streams. 

Headlines were ablaze with Swift’s name after the rights to a substantial portion of her catalogue were acquired by Scooter Braun from Big Machine Records in June, which she said in a Tumblr post was a “Worst Case Scenario.” Swift owns all the rights to Lover, though, so the profits from that album’s sales are going directly to her. 

There have not been any tour dates announced to support Lover, but her “Reputation” tour was big business, getting Swift the No. 2 slot on Pollstar’s Year End Top 100 Tours chart, with $345.1m grossed on 2,888,892 tickets sold. That tour had the highest average gross of any outing on the chart – $9,584,751 per market appearance – thanks to a routing that would regularly take in multiple nights at stadiums. 

Other noteworthy entries on the chart include Lizzo’s climb to No. 6 with 67,300 total album units. She earned that position largely on the back of song sales, with 107,000, second only to Swift in that category. Many of those sales were no doubt the remix of her song “Truth Hurts” feat. DaBaby. 

Lizzo was the BREAKTHROUGH artist on Pollstar’s Live75 chart for the week of Sept. 2, with an average ticket count of 4,328. Repped by WME, her average gross over four reported dates was $156,132 and her chart position for the week was 26, a climb of 9 positions from 35 the previous week.

Missy Elliot also made a splash on the Elite 100 chart, with her 30,300 total album units for the week. Her EP ICONOLOGY came out Aug. 23 and was no doubt driving her 33,000 song sales and 12,100 album sales for the week.

Missy was also highlighted at MTV’s VMA awards Aug. 26 with a Video Vanguard Award and a performance. 

Midland also charted this week thanks to the Aug. 23 release of the group’s latest album, Let It Roll. The band is in the midst of a tour of North America that runs into November, after which they head overseas to the U.K. and the Netherlands. 

Next week’s chart will include data for new releases from Tool, Lana Del Rey, Common, Sheryl Crow, Bon Iver, Trisha Yearwood, Joell Ortiz, Whitney, The Alchemist and Big Wreck. 

Also, be on the lookout for new projects from Post Malone, Lindsey Stirling, XXXTentacion, Melanie Martinez, Rob $tone, Ghostface Killah, Frankie Cosmos, EarthGang, Miles Davis (previously unreleased material), Sleeping With Sirens, Childish Major, IDK, and DJ Muggs & Meyhem Lauren.