Billboard ranks their artist based on chart runs not by total sales. Adele 25 albums might not have lets say as impressive as Taylors 1989 chart runs. But 25 first week Pure Album sales alone was counted at 3.8 million. That is more than half of 1989 Pure US sales already. So no. Adele was the bigger seller based on units.

I am comparing album sales, you are comparing digital downloads to albums.

Didn't Taylor sell physical albums in China? If so, they should be counted normally, because they are physical sales. If they were downloands, I agree, it's not the same.

I'm not talking about Taylor catching up. I'm talking about the fact that Taylor is ahead on 3/4 major streaming platforms, not even including QQ and Gaana. The only place where Rihanna has more streams as a lead is Spotify

Who would you say was the biggest western artist in asia at their peak? I think its probably between mariah, michael and the beatles

Download is weighted less than a physical album simply because its cheaper. Taylor 3 dollar is weighted less than a 14 dollar album because its cheaper. What difference does it makes? 🙄. One person who have 14 dollars to spend on a CD of her favorite artist, will think. Why would I buy a CD costing 14 dollars when I could buy a CD costing 3 dollars and I could buy 3 of them to make my fav artists got inflated like crazy. Or, a person who likes say only 1-2 songs from that particular album but are not willing to spend 14 dollars on an album probably wouldnt mind buying that album if the price got discounted by more than 3 times. Meaning a 3 dollar CD even increase the casual buyers like crazy. These casual buyers probably wouldnt waste their money if the CD is 14 dollars. Thats why it should be weighted differently.

You also said A RECORD IS A RECORD and Revenue Doesnt matter. Clearly you contradict urself when u said downloads should be weighted differently. You urself admit a record is not a record and revenue does matter. 🙄

Clown, first of all, Chartmasters counts features as part of the artist's total EAS. And even in that case, the gap between Taylor and Rih is a mere 5 million EAS (Taylor-91 million EAS(just released her 8th album), Rih-96 mln EAS(she already RELEASED 8 albums and has a lot of features)), and secondly stop downgrading Taylor. Taylor sold 14 mln more albums than Rih (the latest update was in 2019). You know albums count far more than songs. Thirdly, if we take away Rih's features, Rih will look like an amateur (78 mln EAS vs 90 mln(Taylor)). And despite that, Taylor is coming to outsell Rih in 2 years across all credits too. So don't worry 💙

Honestly, the level of uneducated behavior in your comment is ridiculous 😁, 1989 sold 6.3 mln pure in the US. So according to you 3.8 is more than 6.3? Just say I hate Taylor and stop embarrassing yourself tbh
And Taylor is Billboard's Artist of the century

He is saying that the first week of 25 alone has more than the half of 1989 sales. 25 outsold 1989 by more than 3 million in the United States and by 10 million globally xd.

Hi, MJD, I am really worried about TAYLOR's sales being lowered
Look at that
11 September statistics vs 14 September statistics
What is that?
It was 92.6 mln EAS on 11th Sept. And went down to 91 mln on 14th

As I said, I was talking about physical albums, not downloads.

Not everyone can sell millions of CDs in China like Taylor can, even if they cost 3 dollars. She is the only artist capable of doing that because she is truly huge there, so she deserves her credit.

I don't know about Taylors situation in China, but if she is selling physicals they should be counted normally in my opinion.

Aren't MJs album sales in China counted normally despite the low cost?

Pure sales are not important today. It's album equivalents, where Taylor outsells Adele by a mile in the US.

Hi Frank!

What if her sales were inflated on September 11? 😉

The process being the updates of EAS from streams is entirely automated and based on Spotify's daily data. There are about 2 hours per day during which their database is updated. During this timeframe, different versions of the same song with the same streaming count can be updated at different moments, so this will effectively lead to a duplication of the song when searching for the artist on "Spotify streaming tool" page.

There is a script which avoids 99% of these situations by auditing the data, but it's near impossible to cover every cases so from time to time we see a duplication saved in the database, which leads to inflated EAS. We saw this situation happen several times in recent weeks.

A few days ago I changed the script to fix another issue (the absence of newly released tracks that get excluded because they have 0 streams and then remain excluded) and to fix all the corrupted data I cleaned the entire table. I suppose that's how Taylor's total went back to her real tally.

No worries about these 2 millions: I updated her sales figures in recent days, so time for my colleagues to compile her streams and to build back the article content, and she will gain them for real 😉

her streams are not updated

Hi MJD, I Don’t Wanna Live Forever by Taylor Swift and ZAYN doesn’t come under his streams. Any chance you can fix this?

Hi we need some new updates for Taylor since she released another brand new album folklore!