To put Adele’s accomplishment into context, the soulful artist nearly beat the 2.4 million single-week sales record set by *NSYNC’s “No Strings Attached” in 2000 in just three days.
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This CD cover image released by Columbia Records shows “25”, the latest release by Adele.
Nielsen Music’s tracking week runs Friday through Thursday each week, so the first week for “25” will conclude on November 26.
“25” – led by the giant hit “Hello” – consists largely of songs of heartache and nostalgia, following the pattern of “21” which featured the tear-jerking ballad “Someone Like You”.
What all of this means: it is now starting to look like a foregone conclusion that 25 will shatter the official all-time first week record for album sales in America.
When Adele’s 21 was released in January 2011, it sold 208,000 copies in its first week and passed the 500,000 sales milestone by its fourth week on sale.
American pundits forecast Adele will achieve the highest first-week sales ever on the Billboard charts this week, with 1.9 million copies snapped up in two days.
As we wrote last week, Adele is one of the outliers in the current music industry, alongside Taylor Swift (who held back her last album “1989”).
Adele, 27, hasn’t commented on why she refused to make “25” available on streaming services, but artist complaints about paltry royalties from streaming are likely to blame.
On track for world domination… singer Adele’s new album 25 has been released.
These figures come despite the news that Adele won’t be making the album available on music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
The single is also enjoying its fourth week at the top of the ARIA singles charts in Australia.
Yet the industry analyst Mark Mulligan said that the market was very different to four years ago when Adele released 21, and predicted it would be a struggle to overtake it in terms of long-term album sales, particularly physical CDs.
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“25” is also on course to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated December 12), which would give the diva her second No. 1.
