Looking at the sales for Taylor Swift's 1989, it would appear that reports of the death of the music industry have been greatly exaggerated. SoundScan reported Tuesday night that Swift's fifth album sold 1.287 million copies in its first week, the highest out-of-the-box bow for any album release since The Eminem Show sold a hair more than that 12 years ago. She now goes down in history as the first artist in history to have three million-selling opening weeks. This would have been impressive even in 1999, when Backstreet Boys walked the pre-Napster earth like lumbering giants. But in 2014? It's like we've just seen a ghost — the ghost of a happy, healthy music biz that can apparently only be summoned by Swift.

Swift was too busy promoting 1989 in Japan this week to immediately toast the sales or critical plaudits. But we caught up with her by transatlantic phone for her first interview since she achieved these fairly stunning figures. Topics of discussion included her unusual DIY marketing ideas… the album's sure-to-be-controversial second single… and a new over-the-counter medicine you might have heard of called Swiftamine.

There's also that little matter of her having just removed her entire catalog from Spotify, after having previously only withheld new releases from free streaming services. Some news accounts in the business pages have claimed that her label had some secret Machiavellian scheme in mind, but as Swift makes clear here, she's in control of her own business moves as well as her heart.

[Related: Roughly 1,989 Words About Taylor Swift's '1989'! A Track-by-Track Guide]

YAHOO MUSIC: This album had the highest first-week sales since 2002. Then there is also the fact that you're the first artist to have a million-selling week three times in a row. And then there's also just the idea of this being a personal best, just for you. Do any of these ways of looking at the initial success of the album mean more to you than others?

TAYLOR SWIFT: Well, my huge dream in this whole thing, which I was told many times was an unrealistic… I was told many times to keep my expectations in check, so I did. But the ultimate dream was, "Can we ring that bell? Can we get a million; can we do this for the third time?" Because we were all very well aware that if we sold a million records this time, it would be the only time in history that someone had done that three times. That was the most insane thing, when we got the first hint that we might end up actually getting to do it. And then my second biggest hope was, "Hey, wouldn't it be insane if we topped what we did with Red?" And then the fans ended up making that happen, so it's been just kind of like a dream scenario all the way around. And I just feel so lucky that people seem to understand what I was doing with this album and loved the new direction of it.

You put something up on Instagram where you pointed out that some of the so-called experts had initially been projecting it might only sell 650,000. When you heard that back then, were you thinking, "Oh, come on, guys? This is me, Taylor — you know I can do better than that"? Or did you ever give in a bit to the diminished expectations of 2014?

Well, I understand there's been a huge shift in this economic landscape, and the perception of music has changed a lot in the last two years. And so when I saw that number that was lower than what we've done before as a prediction, I didn't really know what to expect anymore. Because I hoped that I had created something that people would want to buy, but I didn't know what's been happening in people's minds… I just was hoping and praying that people still perceived there to be a value to someone's musical creation.



That leads to the streaming question. We've played the game of wondering whether you would have sold hundreds of thousands of fewer copies last week if the album had been available to people for free via those services. To a lot of people, you're a hero for reinforcing that music still has a value. And then there are some people who think you're standing in the way of progress by not giving in to the streaming model. What are your thoughts on all that?

If I had streamed the new album, it's impossible to try to speculate what would have happened. But all I can say is that music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free. I wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal this summer that basically portrayed my views on this. I try to stay really open-minded about things, because I do think it's important to be a part of progress. But I think it's really still up for debate whether this is actual progress, or whether this is taking the word "music" out of the music industry. Also, a lot of people were suggesting to me that I try putting new music on Spotify with "Shake It Off," and so I was open-minded about it. I thought, "I will try this; I'll see how it feels." It didn't feel right to me. I felt like I was saying to my fans, "If you create music someday, if you create a painting someday, someone can just walk into a museum, take it off the wall, rip off a corner off it, and it's theirs now and they don't have to pay for it." I didn't like the perception that it was putting forth. And so I decided to change the way I was doing things.

