Taylor Swift has come under fire in recent weeks for dropping new digital variants of her album The Tortured Poets Department, seemingly in hopes of getting fans to re-buy the album and secure another week at number one.
Billboard has now confirmed that Taylor would still be earning her number one weeks even without the variants being sold, shutting down accusations that she’s intentionally blocking other artists from topping the charts.
This past week, Taylor earned her 15th week at number one on the Billboard 200 chart by moving another 85,000 units of the album. Chappell Roan earned a new peak at number two with her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which had a new weekly high with 72,000 units.
So, how many of those units were the variants?
Keep reading to find out more…
Billboard reports that Taylor sold nearly 10,000 digital album downloads in the past week, which includes the variants on her webstore, as well as all other digital downloads from iTunes and other retailers. It’s unlikely that all 10,000 downloads were of the variants, so the number added to her total was probably even smaller than that.
Taylor secured her number one spot on the chart with a 13,000-unit lead, so she would have still been number one even if she sold zero digital album downloads this past week.
For those who aren’t aware, the variant versions of The Tortured Poets Department have recently included exclusive live recordings of songs from the acoustic section of The Eras Tour. Past variant versions have included exclusive voice memos that Taylor recorded while making the album.
Taylor is seemingly rooting for this other artist to top the chart this week!