The ChartMasters ranking takes into account the Equivalent Album Sales (EAS) metric, which includes all formats of music content: physical and digital albums, singles, and streaming. According to the research, Taylor's total number of sold releases amounts to 253.7 million copies across all formats.
With this, she surpassed Madonna, who is in sixth place. Although Madonna leads in the number of albums sold—146.5 million compared to Swift's 69.6 million—Swift significantly outperforms her in singles sold—175.6 million compared to 42.1 million. In the global list, only The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and Queen rank above Taylor.
At the time of achieving this success, Taylor Swift, who is 35 years old, was born in Pennsylvania. In 2023, she was named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine. Seven of her albums have sold over a million copies in just the first week. Additionally, her tour The Eras Tour (2023) became the highest-grossing tour in history, generating over 1 billion dollars.
