Taylor Swift dropped her fifth studio album on Monday and she may be the only artist who can go platinum in 2014.
No artist's album has sold more than one million copies this year, according to Forbes. Only the "Frozen" soundtrack has achieved platinum status with more than 3.2 million copies sold.
Beyonce's self-titled album and Lorde's "Pure Heroin" have pushed at least 750,000 albums this year, but both artists released their albums in 2013. Country music star Eric Church's album "Outsiders," released in 2014, trails Lorde by 20,000 units and Coldplay's "Ghost Stories" follows close behind Church.
Comparatively, five different albums had gone platinum by this time last year including Justin Timberlake's "20/20 Experience," which finished the year with 2.43 million albums sold. No other artist broke 2 million copies and only nine other albums reached platinum status.
Taylor Swift may have the only chance at going platinum this year with her new album, "1989." Swift's last album "Red" sold 1.2 million copies in its first week in 2012. The music superstar has sold more than 30 million albums and 80 million single digital downloads in her career so far.
Billboard refused to acknowledge the 500 million copies of U2's "Sounds of Innocence" sold to Apple for the company to release free to its iTunes account holders. The album chart does not recognize "free or giveaway albums" until they officially go on sale by "physical and digital retailers," Billboard said in a statement in September.
Sales for the new U2 album would be counted starting on Oct. 14 when the album officially went on sale.
The Foo Fighters' new album "Sonic Highways" could also make a run at platinum status when it's released in November. Music sales tend to spike in the fourth quarter when holiday shoppers start buying CDs for gifts, according to Forbes.
Individual songs that sold more than one million copies have also dropped off significantly compared to last year. Sixty songs have sold one million or more songs this year, but 83 songs went platinum in 2013.
