Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" Sells Over 1 Million In Its First Week

Billboard announced yesterday that Taylor Swift’s sophomore album Speak Now will debut at number one in the US this week with 1,047,000 copies sold — the highest sales since 50 Cent’s The Massacre five years ago and the first album to go platinum in its first week since Lil’ Wayne released Tha Carter III in 2008. You don’t need these types of first week numbers to have a chart-topper these days either: Justin Bieber moved 283,000 in his first week (which was enough for him to be labeled as the savior of the record industry earlier in the year) and shortly after that Usher pushed 329,000 copies of Raymond Vs. Raymond.

What this even means for the record industry at this point is the big question but the competition that’s brewing between her and her old nemesis should come to a head once Susan Boyle releases her album on Monday. Keep in mind that these two battled it out last year for the biggest selling album in the US (Swift arose undefeated with 3,216,000 sold while Boyle managed 3,103,000) and both of them caused the same amount of havoc on the New Zealand chart, especially over the Christmas sales period. Swift also debuted at number one in our local album chart this week, making it look easy despite her album only getting released mid-week, and she’ll easily continue that streak with no major releases coming out this week. So while Boyle and Swift are two artists that might be wildly different, their fans have one big thing in common: they still buy music.