Taylor Swift’s 1989 holds steady at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for a fifth non-consecutive week. Swift has now spent a cumulative total of 29 weeks at No. 1 with her four chart-topping albums. Among women, only Whitney Houston (with 46 weeks at No. 1) and Mariah Carey (30) have more weeks atop the tally.
As reported previously, the Billboard 200 chart now measures multi-metric album consumption, including pure album sales. The ranking combines on-demand streaming and digital track sales in addition to traditional album sales, all measured by Nielsen Music.
On the latest Billboard 200, 81.4 percent of its total album equivalent units (adding up the weekly unit totals of Nos. 1 through 200) are pure album sales. The rest of its units are track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Swift’s 1989 moved 274,000 units in the week ending Dec. 7. That’s down 19 percent from its 339,000 sum a week earlier. It’s not unusual for albums to dip a bit on the chart in the week following the always-busy Thanksgiving shopping frame (which was reflected on last week’s chart).