By Carlos Passage
Attention, there’s a new all-time record:
“The Life of a Showgirl” sold 3.5 million copies in the U.S. alone!
Of that total, traditional sales (CD, vinyl, and digital) accounted for 3.2 million copies, and the remaining 300,000 are based on streaming activity of the album’s songs.
The 3.5 million copies sold figure makes “The Life of a Showgirl” the best-selling album in a single week in the “modern era.”
The modern era is counted from 1991 to the present and refers to the beginning of counting electronic music sales in the U.S. by Luminate (formerly Nielsen), which provides the data to Billboard for its charts.
The single-week sales record in the modern era was held by Adele’s album “25,” which debuted with 3.3 million copies sold in 2015.
Sales of “The Life of a Showgirl” were boosted by its availability in 23 different physical formats: 12 CDs, eight vinyls, and two deluxe box sets with a signed CD, a sweatshirt, a crew-neck T-shirt, and a cassette.
Of course, next Tuesday, “The Life of Showgirl” will be the best-selling album of the week in the United States (their fifteenth #1 album).
Only The Beatles have more number one albums, with 19.
