Taylor Swift was surprised today at her rehearsal for The BRIT Awards at London’s O2 to mark her incredible achievement in being named the world’s most successful artist of 2014.
Frances Moore CEO of global music organisation IFPI presented Taylor in person with the IFPI Global Recording Artist of 2014 award. She was joined by Universal Music Group’s President, Global Marketing, Andrew Kronfeld.
Taylor received the prestigious award honouring her as the most popular recording artist worldwide across all music formats including physical sales, downloads and streaming. Taylor, no stranger to the No 1 position leads a chart that features artists such as Sam Smith, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, Coldplay, One Direction and Pink Floyd.
Taylor’s critically acclaimed fifth studio album 1989 topped iTunes sales charts in over 95 countries on its release and has sold over 8.6 million albums worldwide to date. It was the highest selling release since 2002 and the top selling album of 2014 in the US, where it has now spent 11 weeks at no. 1 on the Billboard 100 chart.
Taylor Swift is a global superstar and the youngest winner in history of the music industry’s highest honour, the GRAMMY Award for Album of the Year. She is the only artist in music history to have three albums (2010’s Speak Now, 2012’s RED, 2014’s 1989) hit the 1 million plus first-week sales figure, and the first artist since The Beatles (and the only female artist in history) to log six or more weeks at No. 1 in the U.S. with three consecutive studio albums. Taylor has career record sales in excess of 40 million albums and 130 million song downloads and is one of the top 5 selling digital music artists worldwide. She has an album on Rolling Stone’s prestigious The 50 Greatest Albums of All Time (by women) list, Time magazine has named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world, and she is Billboard’s youngest-ever Woman of the Year and the only artist to have been awarded this honour twice.
