Taylor Swift shakes off competition to hold Billboard top spot

[November 13, 2014]  By Piya Sinha-Roy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Taylor Swift reigned atop the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart for a second consecutive week on Wednesday after scoring the biggest debut in a dozen years.

"1989" sold 402,000 copies in its second week according to sales figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, outpacing the cumulative sales of the rest of the nine albums in the top ten of Billboard's weekly album chart by nearly 100,000 copies.

The "Now 52" compilation held steady at No. 2 with sales of 59,000, and only three new entries made the top ten of the Billboard 200 chart this week.

Veteran singer Bette Midler's "It's the Girls" clocked in at No. 3, British electronic music DJ Calvin Harris' "Motion" entered at No. 5 and country singer Sam Hunt's "Montevallo" rounded out the list at No. 10.

"1989" opened with 1.3 million copies last week and became Swift's third album to open with more than 1 million copies, making her the only artist to achieve the milestone. The album, billed as Swift's first all-pop record, has benefited from multi-platform promotion and the singer's dedicated social media following.

On the Digital Songs chart this week, which measures single song downloads, Swift's "Blank Space" and "Shake It Off" were at No. 2 and No. 3 respectively, behind Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" at No. 1.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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