‘The Tortured Poets Department’: All the Records Taylor Swift’s New Album Has Broken (So Far)

Before Tortured Poets was even released, its countdown page on Spotify broke the streaming service’s record for most pre-saves in history. The countdown launched on March 28, two weeks ahead of the album’s release date, inviting Swifties to watch as each second ticked down.

Spotify also continuously updated the tab with links to the pop star’s merch as well as cryptic videos of Swift printing lyrics from the LP with a typewriter.

Of Tortured Poets 1.5 million first-week sales, 700,000 of those copies were vinyl. That breaks Swift’s own record for the largest sales week for an album on vinyl in the modern era, or since Luminate began tracking data in 1991, beating the 693,000 sold of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in its first week in 2023.

Prior to its release, Tay announced four vinyl variants of Tortured Poets — “The Manuscript,” “The Albatross,” “The Bolter” and “The Black Dog” — each containing the 16 songs on the album’s main tracklist plus one bonus song.

Not only did Tortured Poets become Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in history in less than 12 hours after its release, it also became the first album on the platform to amass more than 300 million streams in a single day ever.

The streaming service’s previous single-day record-holder was Beyoncé, whose Cowboy Carter garnered 300.41 million on-demand official streams in its first full week of release.

Similarly, the opening track on The Tortured Poets Department — “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone — broke Spotify’s record for the most streams ever garnered by one song in a day.

Apple Music also shared that The Tortured Poets Department had broken its record for biggest pop album of all time by first-day streams shortly after the LP’s release.

Just five days after TTPD was released, it became the first album in Spotify history to surpass one billion streams in a single week. It now stands as the fastest album in history to hit the milestone.

In its first six days on the market, Tortured Poets became the most streamed album in a single week with 799 million streams across all platforms, surpassing Drake’s previous record of 745.92 million with his 2018 LP Scorpion, according to Luminate.

Ready for it? The Tortured Poets Department made a massive debut in its first week, not only starting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated May 4, but also nabbed the record for largest streaming week ever for an album since the chart started measuring by units in December 2014. Its first-week total came to 2.61 million, with album sales accounting for 1.914 million of that number.

With TTPD reaching the summit to become her 14th chart-topper, she now ties Jay-Z for most No. 1s among solo artists.