Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl sells 1.2 million vinyl copies in one day, breaking the all-time single-week sales record in America. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 02: (FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Taylor Swift attends the 67th GRAMMY Awards on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
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Taylor Swift has once again redefined what’s possible when it comes to modern era album sales — this time on vinyl. Swift has always been a force when it comes to the format, which was once considered to be all but dead. Every album she releases seems to break her own record for sales on wax, and this time, she’s truly outdone herself.
Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl Breaks the All-Time Vinyl Sales Record
The Life of a Showgirl has sold 1.2 million copies on vinyl, setting a new all-time record for the format — not just within Swift’s discography, but for any artist in history. It’s the first project to sell more than one million vinyl copies in a single week in the United States.
Taylor Swift Shatters Her Own Vinyl Record With The Life of a Showgirl
The Life of a Showgirl easily surpasses the previous record of 859,000 vinyl copies, set by Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department in 2024. While her lengthy The Tortured Poets Department reached that number over a full seven-day tracking period, her latest topped it – by hundreds of thousands of sales – in just one day.
What Taylor Swift’s 1.2 Million Vinyl Sales Means
The 1.2 million total doesn’t mean Swift sold that many physical copies in a single day. Instead, it reflects weeks of massive pre-orders from fans and retailers alike. The figure includes purchases from brick-and-mortar stores, online outlets like Amazon, and Swift’s own official website.
Swift has boosted her vinyl numbers by releasing multiple versions of each album, a strategy that’s become central to her rollout plans. The Life of a Showgirl arrived in several collectible editions, each with different artwork, colors, and occasionally slightly altered titles, even though the tracklist remains identical. Those small differences turn every album drop into a nationwide event, prompting superfans to buy multiple copies.
Taylor Swift’s Vinyl Sales Alone Rival Her Biggest Career Weeks
The vinyl total alone for The Life of a Showgirl would qualify as one of Swift’s biggest overall sales weeks ever — even without factoring in CDs, digital downloads, or streaming activity. On vinyl alone, The Life of a Showgirl has outsold the complete opening-week totals of Folklore, Lover, and Fearless, all of which debuted with under one million units.
The Life of a Showgirl’s first-day vinyl sales sum even surpasses Speak Now, Swift’s first release to sell one million copies in a single frame. The fact that her new studio effort can match or exceed those numbers on vinyl alone — a format most thought would never again see such figures — shows just how far Swift has pushed the limits of modern music consumption.
Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl Sells 2.7 Million Copies — And Counting
In total, The Life of a Showgirl has already sold 2.7 million copies — a number that includes vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and digital downloads, but not streaming activity. That figure represents Swift’s first-day sales and pre-orders combined, and it is a truly extraordinary total for any artist in today’s music landscape.
How Big Will The Life of a Showgirl’s First Week Be?
Once streaming activity is factored in, The Life of a Showgirl could become even grander. Early projections suggest that after the full seven-day tracking period is complete, the album could sell three million copies or more, making it just the second title in history to reach that figure.
Adele’s 25 set the all-time record for opening-week sales in 2015, moving 3.378 million copies during its first frame. If The Life of a Showgirl maintains its current pace, Swift may come closer than any artist has in the decade since 25’s release — and possibly even challenge that long-standing benchmark.
When streaming is added to the equation, The Life of a Showgirl could easily surpass three million total units and potentially approach three and a half million. That would make it not only Swift’s biggest debut yet but one of the largest in the modern history of the Billboard 200 era.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2025/10/08/taylor-swift-shatters-the-all-time-vinyl-sales-record-in-a-matter-of-hours/
