Strong start for Swift album

Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” album, which was released Monday, is shaping up to have possibly the biggest first-week sales of any album this year, according to Billboard. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter’s third album is expected to log sales of at least 800,000 to 900,000 copies by Sunday, Billboard reports.

That would put it ahead of the year’s current first-week sales champ, Eminem’s “Recovery,” which posted initial sales of 741,000 in June.

The enthusiastic response to the album runs counter to the downward trend of overall record sales, which in the latest reporting period were 14 percent lower than the same period last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Just two weeks ago, Toby Keith’s “Bullets in the Gun” set a record for the lowest sales figure for a No. 1 album debut — 71,000 copies — since SoundScan began monitoring retail sales in 1991.