Taylor, Travis, K-Pop: America's Most Popular Albums

Despite streaming becoming the main revenue source in recorded music, physical album sales and digital album downloads in the U.S. increased year-over-year by five percent to 105 million, according to data released in Luminate's year-end report. The RIAA arrives at a slightly lower number and estimates revenues of $1.9 billion with physical music, $1.4 billion of which was made with vinyl, against $14.4 billion from streaming. Interestingly, the artist with the most appearances in Luminate's top 8 best-selling albums of 2023 was also heavily present in the streaming world.

Taylor Swift, who released her rerecorded versions of "Speak Now" and "1989" in the past year, was not only the most-streamed artist on Spotify globally, according to a press release by the Swedish audio streaming service. She also occupied five spots in the 2023 album bestseller list, with "1989 (Taylor's Version)" selling 1.4 million digital and physical copies more than the next-highest non-Taylor Swift entry. Even older records like "Lover" from 2019 and "Folklore" from 2020 proved viable for long-tail sales, with 430,000 and 470,000 copies, respectively, sold in 2023.

Coming in fourth is rapper Travis Scott with his most recent album "Utopia", recording 580,000 unit sales across physical media and downloads. Scott was also present among the top 10 streamed artists on Spotify in 2023, ranking seventh. The other two spots on the list of best-selling albums in the U.S. are claimed by K-pop acts from South Korea. The boy group Stray Kids sold around 530,000 copies of their album "5-Star", 98 percent were CD sales. Tomorrow x Together, another boy band founded in 2019, moved 442,000 copies of their newest record, virtually all of them on CD as well.