genre pop

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Taylor Swift, who seems to break industry records with every album and tour, just had the career week of her lifetime: in its first week of availability, her latest album, The Life of A Showgirl, rang up about $135 million in revenue, Billboard estimates.

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That total revenue number comes from the album’s massive first-week haul — it debuted with 4.002 million equivalent album units, according to Luminate, the only album to pass 4 million in the modern era, and accounted for 50.01% of all current albums in the U.S. that week — but also to an overdrive marketing campaign launched by the Swift camp and her record label, Republic. While global album unit numbers are not available through Luminate, in its first week of availability, the songs on The Life of A Showgirl garnered 1.4 billion global streams, which Billboard calculates by adding up Luminate global stream counts reported for each song on the album.

The Showgirl album came with 38 variants across about a dozen different editions. That included a number of different colored vinyl versions — with each including add-ons like a poster or autographed photos or an acoustic bonus track — with several limited editions or deluxe versions as well. Those variants drove an incredible buying frenzy among Swift fans. What’s more, most of those variants — because of the extra bells and whistles — resulted in wholesale prices above cost levels usually offered to retailers for CD and vinyl formats.

Since the preorder launch in August, most of the editions exclusive to Swift’s webstore were sold for limited windows of time. Target had an exclusive CD, and there was one widely available standard CD, while four CD variants with bonus tracks launched during street week and were initially exclusively sold in Swift’s webstore, before becoming available at indie record stores.

But the biggest revenue driver is that non-traditional channels — online CD stores like Amazon and the official Taylor Swift webstore, as well as Christian stores and chains like Urban Outfitters — accounted for 70% of all the album’s consumption units. Within that, Billboard estimates that Swift’s own store garnered the overwhelming bulk of that, or more than 65% market share of Showgirl’s total first week of 4.002 million album consumption units. 

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That provided another revenue boost in that the Swift store charged retail pricing, similar to what brick and mortar stores were charging, rather than a wholesale price. For example, while retailers say the wholesale price for the Swift vinyl was $23.49 and $10.34 for CDs, the Swift webstore sold the vinyl album for $29.99, or 27.6% above wholesale; and the CD for $12.99, or 25.6% above wholesale. In other words, the albums sold through Swift’s webstore delivered at least 25% higher per-unit revenue than what she received from brick-and-mortar retail, giving her and Republic a higher profit margin. (Republic Records did not respond to a request for comment.)

The Swift store also offered two CD box sets, which featured the album bundled with a Showgirl hoodie and a Showgirl cardigan, priced at $65 to $70, respectively, delivering even more revenue.

All told, Showgirl sold 1.76 million CDs, 1.334 million vinyl album copies, 358,000 album downloads and 26,000 cassette albums and accumulated 523,000 stream equivalent albums in the U.S., thanks to the album’s nearly 682 million on-demand streams in the first week, according to Luminate. Setting aside streams, the sales figures accounted for 71% of all the albums sold in the U.S. that week; 77% of all CDs sold; 66% of all vinyl sold; 58% of all digital albums sold; and 72% of all physical albums sold.

Even Showgirl’s streams are doing somewhat better in terms of revenue than a typical pop album. For example, her streaming equivalent album units break out to 1,306 streams per unit, while an album like the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack averaged 1,423 streams per stream equivalent album (SEA).

What’s the significance of this? The industry and Luminate count 1,250 paid streams per one streaming consumption unit, and 3,750 ad-supported streams per one streaming consumption unit. So the closer the number of streams is to the 1,250 paid streams count — such as Showgirl’s 1,306 streams — shows that her fans were mainly accessing her music through a paid service, while the Kpop Demon Hunters album was somewhat more dependent on the lower-paying ad-supported per-stream rate.

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So how does that add up to $135 million? Considering retail pricing on her webstore, wholesale prices quoted from merchants, the standard wholesale cost for downloads (70% of retail) and the standard blended rate of $0.0053 per stream, Billboard calculates that in its debut week, Showgirl accumulated $80 million in revenue in the U.S. for Republic and Swift. Extrapolating for global activity,  Billboard estimates that total revenue totaled about $135 million for its debut week.

Still, as amazing as that debut week was, her catalog so far this year is still trailing the torrid pace her music set in the prior two years, when her Eras Tour and The Tortured Poets Department album drove incredible business for her entire catalog. So far in 2025, her full catalog’s total U.S. album consumption units, including the contributions from Showgirls’ record-breaking first week, stands at 11.23 million units as of the week ending Oct. 16, or week 41 in Luminate calendar year terms. At the end of the 41st week last year, her catalog had accumulated 15 million units; in 2023, it stood at 12.3 million units.

By the end of those two years, she wound up with nearly 19 million album consumption units each year in the U.S. To put that number into perspective, Swift’s 37.4 million U.S. album consumption units across those two years dwarf Drake‘s figure of nearly 16 million album consumption units in the U.S. Globally, Swift’s catalog racked up 90.3 billion streams during the period, compared to Drake’s 36.7 billion global streams.

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During those two years of 2023 and 2024, Billboard estimates that the entire Swift catalog annually averaged about $350 million in revenue. So far this year, Swift’s catalog, including Showgirl, has generated around $265 million. That catalog estimate also includes revenue from activity from the second week of Showgirl‘s availability, which clocked in at nearly 339,000 album consumption units, including 1,000 track equivalent albums, bringing total sales of the album to 4.3 million units as of the week ending Oct. 16.

Another financial wrinkle: While most artists on major labels are still tied to a royalty rate percentage or, for superstars, a profit-sharing arrangement, Swift owns her entire catalog. That means that for physical product, she is likely reaping at least 70% of revenue collected after production, distribution and marketing fees are paid to Republic and Universal. For digital downloads and streaming, she might be realizing 85% to 90% of such revenue collected by UMG, or maybe even slightly above 90%.

And all of that is without calculating her music publishing — which in the case of 2023 and 2024 combined could be in the range of $100 million to $200 million, depending on her share of the songwriting — and merchandise, which could bring in untold additional millions. Across 30 different Showgirl-themed pieces of merch through her webstore, the numbers could be mind-boggling.