To put 25’s staggering figure in further perspective, in 2014, only two albums sold more in the entire year than 25 did in a single week: Taylor Swift’s 1989 (3.66 million) and the Frozen soundtrack (3.53 million).
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Adele’s Grammy-winning 2011 album “21” also saw a boost, rising to ninth place on the Billboard 200 from 25th the week before.
Adele, 27, surpassed *NSync’s 15-year record, as the group’s 2000 album, No Strings Attached, sold 2.4 million copies in its first week. Only one other new release managed to infiltrate the Top 10 in a week where labels avoided a sales showdown with Adele: Enya’s Dark Sky Island entered the charts at Number Eight. This is the largest sales week since Nielsen began tracking this data in 1991. Considering that 25 is already the top selling album on 2015 and it is late in the year, odds are she will have the best-selling album of 2016 too.
On Sunday, Billboard reported the singer’s third album sold 3.38 million copies in the us, a record for single-week sales according to Nielsen Music. Hello became the first track to sell more than 1 million downloads in a week, almost doubling the previous record of 636,000 held by Flo Rida’s Right Round. This meant that even people who pay the $10 monthly fee for Spotify Premium could not listen to Adele’s album on the service.
Usher’s 2004 album Confessions sold more than a million copies in its debut week. The practice has indeed been controversial, as it potentially allows artists with huge hit singles to appear on the charts as if their albums are also doing well, when actual sales of their collections may be minimal. Pandora has the album available and that gives the service an edge over its rivals.
With that number, “25” immediately shatters Justin Bieber’s record which he set last week when his “Purpose” debuted with 649,000 units.
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Move over, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé; there is a new queen in town and her name is Adele.
