Taylor Swift paints iTunes Red as new album debut breaks records

With over 1.2 million copies downloaded last week, Taylor Swift's latest album, Red, has scored the highest SoundScan sales week in over a decade and has set the record for the highest worldwide digital album sales debut in iTunes history.

Not since The Eminem Show in 2002 has the Nielsen SoundScan seen such a high sales number, and Taylor is one of only four artists (and the only female artist) to sell over 1 million copies in their first week twice since SoundScan began tracking actual sales in 1991.

With Red's debut success, Swift has also snagged the 8th largest first-week debut in SoundScan chart history and the second biggest week ever for a female artist. The album debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and this week sold more than the rest of the albums in the Top 50 combined.

One out of nearly every 5 CDs or downloads sold this week was Taylor's Red album.

With Red, Taylor set a new worldwide iTunes record for highest ever first-week album sales, with over half a million copies sold digitally around the globe. Red reached #1 on the iTunes sales charts in 42 countries, and reached #1 on the national sales charts in the UK, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Ireland, Argentina, New Zealand, and Ireland among others.

Red also breaks iTunes's first-week U.S. sales record, with more than 464,000 albums sold. At Target, Red set the retailer's new one-week sales record with more than 396,000 CDs sold — Taylor's Speak Now album previously held their record.

It topped the all-genre Top Albums chart at iTunes within 36 minutes of its release last week, and first day sales at iTunes alone topped 262,000 albums. Taylor scored 13 of the Top 20 songs on iTunes, with the song "Everything Has Changed" taking the #1 position on the all-genre Top Songs chart.

Taylor just announced The Red Tour, and is currently slated to headline 58 shows in 45 cities in 29 states and 3 provinces across North America in 2013.