IB, Borchetta on million-seller

BLUEPRINT OF A BLOCKBUSTER: Taylor Swift’s enormous 1.044m first week—which had jaws dropping all over the music business—indicates that great records filled with relatable songs from bona fide stars will sell in any era, even this one. Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta and Universal Republic’s Monte Lipman have once again collaborated on a masterful setup. "I think this shows that when we do it right, we can still get hundreds of thousands of people to line up and buy [an album] the first week," Borchetta told the L.A. Times yesterday. "There are so many factors behind why certain things are happening and why certain things are not happening in our industry: what the real unemployment level is, the fact we don't have record stores anymore… We attacked all of that. You can't do that with every release, but you can do it with superstars." (11/4a)