One Direction 'Four': New Album Makes Billboard History & Knocks Taylor Swift From No. 1
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - British boy band One Direction became the only group to score four consecutive No. 1 debuts on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, ousting Taylor Swift from her chart-topping reign.
One Direction's latest album, "Four", sold 387,000 copies in its first week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan.
It follows the band's three previous albums, 2011's "Up All Night," 2012's "Take Me Home" and 2013's "Midnight Memories," all of which opened at No. 1 on the Billboard chart.
Sales of "Four" may have been boosted after One Direction won three times at Sunday's televised American Music Awards, including the night's top place for artist of the year. The group also performed new song "Night Changes" at the ceremony.
The band also made history on music streaming platform Spotify by scoring the most first-week streams after "Four" was streamed 11.6 million times in the United States and 30 million times worldwide. The news comes after Swift made a highly publicized move to take her music catalog off the popular service.
Swift's "1989" dropped to No. 2 this week with 214,000 sales. The album became the biggest debut of the year after opening with 1.3 million copies, and held the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart for three consecutive weeks.
"1989" has sold more than 2.2 million copies, the second-biggest selling album of 2014, behind only Disney's "Frozen" soundtrack with 3.6 million copies.
Other new entries in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart this week include Canadian rockers Nickelback at No. 4 with "No Fixed Address" and metal group In This Moment at No. 8 with "Black Widow."
For the week ended Nov. 23, Billboard said a total of 5.5 million albums were sold, up 4 percent from the comparable week in 2013. Year-to-date sales rounded out at 215 million, down 12 percent from the same period last year.
This is the last week Nielsen SoundScan will compile the Billboard 200 album chart from sales figures alone. From next week, the album chart will reflect online streaming and digital track sales to accurately reflect which records were most in demand.
