TAYLOR SWIFT’S RED DEBUTS AT #1

TAYLOR SWIFT’S ‘RED’ TOPS CANADIAN SOUNDSCAN CHARTS

WITH HIGHEST DEBUT IN FOUR YEARS

MORE THAN 92,000 SOLD IN FIRST WEEK

SWIFT EARNS CRITICAL RAVES AND SHATTERS SALES RECORDS

Toronto, ON. (31 October 2012) –Taylor Swift's blockbuster new album RED has debuted atop the Canadian Nielsen SoundScan album chart, with a staggering 92,580 copies sold in Canada in its first week of release – the highest selling debut on the Canadian Soundscan since 2008. In the United States, RED sold a whopping 1,208,290 albums (Nielsen SoundScan) and is the highest weekly sales number in more than a decade (since 2002’s The Eminem Show), earning Taylor a new page in the history books as the only female artist (and the fourth artist ever) to hit the 1 million first-week figure twice since SoundScan began tracking actual sales in 1991. RED is released on Big Machine Records/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music Company. With RED, Taylor set a new worldwide iTunes record for highest ever first-week album sales, with 565,545 copies sold digitally around the globe. RED reached #1 on the iTunes sales charts in 42 countries including Canada, and also reached #1 on the national sales charts in the UK, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Ireland, Argentina, New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia, among others. RED also enters Top Country Albums chart at #1, and now owns the best one week sales total for any Country release in SoundScan history, surpassing the 1.08 million copies sold of Garth Brooks’ Double Live in 1998. Taylor now has two of the three biggest one week sales totals for any Country album in the SoundScan era. Critical acclaim for RED matches the disc’s sales and chart success, with continuing rave reviews from leading critics around the globe. "She's a lethally smart songwriter and there's this universality that speaks not just to young women, but everyone who wants to find love and has felt heartbreak," Bill Werde, editorial director of Billboard, told Reuters yesterday.

“Ms. Swift has excelled….. now eight years removed from her debut single, [she] has become one of the most important pop artists of the last decade.” -- The New York Times

“Swift is clearly a superstar for all seasons…..sheer genius.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Engaging….she continues to write ever-more convincingly.” – USA Today

“RED is a terrific piece of work. A portrait of a young artist in full bloom.” – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Swift’s bare-all lyrics are sublime.” –The Sunday Times (UK)

At radio, RED’s lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, went to #1 at Canadian Radio and spent its fourth week at #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Current single, "Begin Again" is Canadian Country Radio now, and Top 20 on the Billboard & Mediabase Country radio charts in America. The video for the song has already amassed over 8,000,000 views online. Taylor will perform “Begin Again” on the 46th Annual CMA Awards tomorrow night on ABC. Worldwide, RED reached #1 on iTunes on the first day of release in 32 countries, including the UK, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Denmark, Venezuela, Thailand, and Ireland. With RED, Taylor set the new Billboard record for the most rapid accumulation of 50 Hot 100 hits in history, reaching the milestone just six years and one month after her 2006 chart debut. Taylor just announced The RED Tour, and is currently slated to headline 58 shows in 45 cities in 29 states and 3 provinces in 2013 including Toronto (15 June 2013), Winnipeg (22 June 2013) and Vancouver (29 June 2013). Taylor Swift is a six-time GRAMMY winner, and is the youngest winner in history of the music industry’s highest honor, the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. She is Billboard’s reigning Woman of the Year, as well as the AMA’s current Artist of the Year and the CMA and ACM’s Entertainer of the Year. Her Speak Now album was lauded on Rolling Stone’s prestigious The 50 Greatest Albums of All Time (by women) list and Time Magazine has named Taylor one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Last month, Swift was awarded the Canadian Country Music Awards’ ‘Generation Award’.