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Adele’s ’25’ will beat *NSYNC’s record for highest first week sales

David Bakula, Nielsen Entertainment’s senior vice president of industry insights, told The Los Angeles Times on Monday. “The projections I’ve seen are putting it at around 2.9 million (for the first week)”.

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They include a special edition of Take That’s III, Olly Murs with Never Been Better, Cilla Black’s The Very Best of and Tracey Chapman’s Greatest Hits. Before 25 was released, Justin Bieber’s comeback effort objective had the highest-selling debut week of 2015; it sold 522,000 copies and 649,000 equivalent album units. Can it hit 3 million?

The record producers have anticipated a strong demand for Adele’s latest album.

It is increasingly rare for an artist to top the 1 million opening week sales with a new album because fans are driven more and more to online streaming to consume music. Coming off of the 11 million selling 21, the response to 25’s first single “Hello” was overwhelmingly positive. She freely admits in the interview (video itself only available to those within the Australian viewing area) that she struggles with the idea of being famous and has a lot of nerves surrounding it. Last year, Taylor Swift also skipped releasing her album, “1989”, on the service. Her last album, 21, spent 24 weeks atop the charts. “25” already holds second place on that particular record table, ahead of Take That’s “Progress”, which sold 519,000 copies in November 2010.

Sixty-two percent of these USA sales (around 1.18m) were digital downloads, says BuzzAngle – after Adele and her Stateside label Columbia (Sony) notoriously decided not to put the album on streaming services such as Spotify. Adele’s disc went on sale Friday. “The idea that people might look back to my music in 50 years’ time was a real spur to doing this”.

This album, however, shows a whole new Adele when compared to “21”.

But just as interesting is Emery’s suggestion that a number of artists will follow Adele’s non-streaming strategy with their upcoming albums – and find that it is a mistake.

She performed the first single “Hello” on “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend.

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Sales data for the first full week will be released by Nielsen on Nov 30. Where music fans who like Swift are mostly limited to those who like pop or country, and *NSYNC’s music is primarily enjoyed by pop fans, Adele’s songs traverse typical genre boundaries, and therefore tends to attract more fans.

Image Kevin Mazur