Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’ Heads To Another Massive Debut Atop Billboard 200

Less than five months after releasing his critically acclaimed blockbuster Folklore, Taylor Swift is heading straight to the top of the Billboard 200 with her companion record, Increasingly, which is about to mark another great debut sales week.

Swift’s ninth studio album is projected to sell between 300,000 and 350,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, HITS Daily Double reports. That sum includes 150,000-170,000 pure copies, with the remainder coming largely from streaming and individual track downloads. It will mark Swift’s eighth consecutive number one album on the Billboard 200, and will make her the third artist of 2020 to score two number one albums behind YoungBoy Never Broke Again38 Baby 2 and Upper part) and BTS (Soul Map: 7 and TO BE).

Increasingly got off to a massive start on streaming services, with its 15 standard edition tracks debuting in the Top 18 on the US Spotify chart, punctuated only by a trio of songs from the Kid Cudi remake. Man on the Moon III: The Chosen One. The lead single “Willow” topped the US Spotify chart with 3.645 million views on Friday and stayed there all weekend. It also debuted at the top of Spotify’s global chart with 7.268 million first-day streams. Increasingly marked Spotify’s second-biggest debut for an album by a female artist this year behind Swift himself Folklore, while “Willow” scored the sixth-biggest worldwide debut on Spotify of 2020. (Folklore The single “Cardigan” got the second biggest arc, right behind BTS’s “Dynamite”).

Yes Increasingly meets current projections, will mark Swift’s lowest sales in the first week since her self-titled debut album in 2006, and less than half of Folklore846,000 units in the first week. But it’s still an impressive charting feat for a number of reasons. For starters, some level of commercial decline is almost guaranteed when an artist releases two blockbuster albums so close to each other. A good comparison is Justin Timberlake. The 20/20 Experience, which debuted with 968,000 copies in March 2013, and The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2, which debuted with 350,000 copies six months later.

This is also the first release of Swift’s album since Billboard updated its ticket and merchandise package rules in October. The company no longer counts albums with merchandise or concert tickets on its album or song charts unless they are promoted as a supplement to those purchases. Additionally, physical or single albums included with digital downloads can no longer be reported as digital sales, and the physical product must be shipped before it can be counted on the charts.

Swift, along with countless other pop stars, used those old rules to her advantage with Folklore, selling eight limited edition vinyl LPs and CDs that included an instant digital download of the album, while the vinyl did not ship for several months. The singer also included Folklore with various products and clothing, increasing its pure sales during the first week to an astronomical 615,000 copies. By contrast, Swift has only released a vinyl edition of Increasingly, and none of the physical editions of the album or corresponding merchandise appear to include a digital download of the album, which is available for purchase separately. In the future, more artists are likely to continue to ditch the merchandise and physical / digital bundles to ensure that all sales of their albums are deemed legitimate by Billboard.

In light of these changes in Billboardthe rules of the pack and the short period of time between the last two releases of her album, Swift projects Increasingly The debut is still a great achievement. It is on its way to becoming the biggest debut of Billboardwas post-package (a record currently held by BTS TO BE), and further demonstrates that in an era of dwindling album sales, few artists can move hard copies like Swift.