Taylor Swift's RED CD Closes In On 3 Million Albums Sold Worldwide In Just Three Weeks

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Released less than a month ago, Taylor Swift's fourth studio album, RED, is already approaching the 2.8 million album worldwide sales mark.

After debuting with music's highest first-week album sales in over a decade, RED is currently in its third consecutive week in the #1 position atop Billboard's 200 top albums chart, and as of this week RED will have scanned more than 1.8 million albums in the U.S. since its October 22^nd release.

RED, released on Big Machine Records, has topped the sales charts in 42 countries worldwide, with international sales topping 920,000 albums thus far. Taylor now has worldwide career record sales in excess of 26 million albums and 75 million song downloads.

This weekend, tickets went on sale for Taylor's two July RED Tour stops at Foxborough, Mass.'s Gillette Stadium, with the back to back stadium shows selling out in just 5 minutes.

On Friday, Taylor sold out three stadiums: Toronto's Rogers Centre (sold out in 5 minutes), Detroit's Ford Field (sold out in 10 minutes), and Chicago's Soldier Field (sold out in 25 minutes), as well as arenas in Los Angeles (2 shows in 1 minute), Washington DC (2 shows in 5 minutes), Atlanta (2 shows in 5 minutes), Miami, Tampa, Columbus, San Diego and Sacramento. Tickets for Taylor's two August shows in Kansas City also sold out over the weekend.

Taylor Swift's The RED Tour will now include 11 stadium stops, for a total of 62 shows in 45 cities in 29 states and 3 provinces in 2013.  A complete listing of tour dates, including future onsale information, is available at www.taylorswift.com.

Last night, Taylor brought home her 11^th career American Music Award, winning Favorite Female Artist (Country) for the fifth consecutive year. Just a week earlier, Taylor won three European Music Awards, taking top honors for Best Female Act, Best Live Act, and Best Look.

The fan response to Taylor's RED album and tour has been matched by the project's critical acclaim, with the album earning rave reviews from critics around the globe. Just this weekend, Vanity Fair dubbed Taylor "officially the new Mick Jagger," calling her international chart-topper "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" "the year's best pop song." VF asks, "Who is more interesting in pop right now?" and praises Taylor's "hooks and insouciance," lauding her music as "canny and knowing."

Lauded by The New York Times as "one of the most important pop artists of the last decade," and by Rolling Stone as "one of the few genuine rock stars we've got these days," 22 year-old Taylor Swift is a six-time GRAMMY winner, and is the youngest winner in history of the music industry's highest honor, the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Taylor is the only female artist in music history (and just the fourth artist ever) to twice have an album hit the 1 million first-week sales figure. She holds the record for the biggest digital sales week ever for a song by a woman, and for the second-largest song sales week overall, as well as the worldwide iTunes record for highest ever first-week album sales.

Taylor, who writes all of her own songs, has an album on Rolling Stone's prestigious The 50 Greatest Albums of All Time (by women) list, and Time magazine has named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is Billboard's youngest-ever Woman of the Year, and her more than 100 industry award wins have included the American Music Awards' Artist of the Year, the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year and three European Music Awards.

Taylor's two most recent albums are two of only 18 albums in the entire history of music to sell more than 1 million copies in a single week. She has had singles top both the country and pop radio charts around the globe, and has thus far scored 11 #1 singles across multiple radio formats. She is one of the top 5-selling digital music artists worldwide, and is the top-selling digital artist in country music history.

SOURCE Big Machine Records