That record is currently held by Oasis, whose album “Be Here Now” sold 696,000 copies in its first week in 1997, whilst Official Charts Company statistics show “25” has shifted just over 500,000 within its first three days. That sum beats the single-week record for an album since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991, set by *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, when it debuted with 2,416,000 in the week ending March 26, 2000.
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British singer Adele has broken the single-week United States album sales record in just four days with her new release “25”, Nielsen Music said.
The record is now expected to have sold over 3 million copies by the end of its first week on sale. (21 didn’t do so badly itself, becoming the first album to top the best-selling USA albums list two years in a row, and the first album to sell more than three million digital copies).
Perhaps one reason for the unusually brisk sales is that Adele blocked the record from streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify. (“1989” was released in November 2014.) It will replace Justin Bieber’s “Purpose”, which debuted at No. 1 with 522,000 sales and 100 million streams (in the United States) through Thursday. Billboard is scheduled to report 25’s debut week sales on Sunday, November 29, once Nielsen has finished processing its weekly data. “I’m a huge fan….I even bought the damn album”.
The phenomenally popular Millennium became one of the best-selling records of all time, staying at the No 1 spot on the Billboard charts for 10 consecutive weeks and selling 1,133,505 in the first week – and 28 million copies worldwide.
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Industry forecasters suggest the album could finish the week with 2.9 million sold, because Adele can shatter even numbers by the power of her voice alone.
