Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets Department' broke a world streaming record in its first week

Taylor Swift has already broken, re-broken and extended several records around the world Advertising sign charts this week. In addition to its amazing US sales and streaming totals, as reflected on the May 4 charts, Department of Tormented Poets is a certified global phenomenon: Its 31 songs on the deluxe LP edition combined for the biggest worldwide streaming week on the Billboard Global 200, which reflects consumption in more than 200 territories, including the US, released in September 2020. According to with Luminate, the album amassed 1.76 billion streams worldwide in the week ending April 25, following the set's release on April 19.

Swift is no stranger to streaming world records, as her new collection breaks the previous high set by her own Midnight. As of October 2022, the 20-song deluxe edition album then had 1.16 billion streams. That means Swift didn't just set a new benchmark, it entered a whole new realm, bettering its previous best by 52%.

It would be easy to attribute Department of Tormented PoetsIts massive streaming set to its expansive tracklist, as Swift added 15 songs (dubbed collectively as The Anthology) just two hours after the 16-song standard version was released. And while those tracks certainly helped, with nearly half a billion streams between them, it would have broken the record with the original 16 songs, which combined for 1.27 billion first-week global clicks.

Overall, Swift averaged 56.8 million streams per song across all 31 tracks, trailing Midnight57.8 million

But while Department of Tormented PoetsIts original tracklist accounted for the lion's share of the album's streaming total, while additional Anthology titles sold more. Swifties already had the standard edition songs after breaking vinyl sales records, but could only listen to the additional 15 tracks via streaming or digital purchase platforms. They sold a total of 95,000 copies worldwide, April 19–25, compared to 82,000 for the standard tracks.

Just over half of Swift's first-week streams came from the US, with 869.6 million coming from overseas. So while she is based in America and even started her career in the US-dominated country genre, her starpower knows no geographical boundaries, as Department of Tormented Poets it also claims the longest streaming week for a non-US album (as of September 2020). Making this international record, it surpasses Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Tiwhose 23 songs amassed a total of 704.7 million streams outside the US upon arrival in the week ending May 12, 2022 (for charts dated May 21).

The six biggest non-US streaming debut weeks all belong to Swift and Bad Bunny. In addition to The Tortured Poets Department, Swift collected 606 million Midnight and 440.8 million for 1989 (Taylor Edition) in their operating weeks. And besides Un Verano Sin TiBad Bunny scored 502.1 million for nadie sabe lo que va a pasar manana and 378 million for El Ultimo tour Del Mundo in their first frames.

“Fortnight,” featuring Post Malone, leads the charge, debuting atop the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. US, starting at number one with 176.8 million streams – or 10% of the album's total streams – and 27,000 downloads sold worldwide. On the Global 200, Swift marks her fifth No. 1, the most by a solo artist in the survey's history. In the World Excl. USA, gets its third leader, tied for most soloists.

Meanwhile, “Fortnight” appears from 34 of Advertising signThe Hits of the World charts, topping Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Swift scores the top nine spots – marking a first – on the Global 200 and six of the top 10 spots on the Global Excl. US, while all 16 of the album's standard edition titles are in the top 30 of each chart. Swift tied Morgan Wallen (March 18, 2023) for most entries – 34 – in a single week on the Global 200, while her 34 titles on the Global Excl. US sets new one-week record. Swift (July 22, 2023) and Bad Bunny (May 21, 2022) previously shared the mark with 28 each.