Taylor Swift back at No. 1, thanks to holiday shopping

Taylor Swift performs at the Z100's iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2017 at Madison Square Garden PHOTO: AFP

LOS ANGELES (NYTimes) - The first Billboard chart of the new year belongs to Taylor Swift. Her Reputation returns to No. 1 for a fourth time, with the equivalent of 107,000 sales, according to Nielsen.

Of that total, 79,000 copies were sold as full albums, and the rest were made up of streams and downloads of individual tracks.

The latest chart counts sales made in the seven days through Dec 28, which means that Swift probably benefited from last-minute holiday shopping.

Huncho Jack, the new duo of rappers Travis Scott and Quavo (of Migos), started at No. 3 with Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho. The album had the equivalent of 90,000 sales, the vast majority from streams.

Ed Sheeran's ÷ is at No. 2 in its 43rd week on the chart.

Eminem's Revival, last week's top seller, falls to No. 4 in its second week.

The soundtrack to The Greatest Showman, the P.T. Barnum biopic starring Hugh Jackman, is at No. 5.

In the new year, Billboard will adjust its chart formulas to give greater weight to streams from paid subscription services, and less to free streams.

That may penalise some genres, like rap and Latin pop, that have been most popular on streaming, and have come to dominate the charts because of it.

Billboard said the changes were being made to "accurately portray in an unbiased manner" the way music is listened to, as well as the economic differences of various online formats.

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