In just days, Adele’s “25” has officially set a new first-week sales record, moving 2.433 million albums since its release Friday. It’s a stunning number for a music industry that has seen sales steadily fall in the digital era.
On Tuesday, Nielsen Music said that in just four days the British singer broke the record previously set by ‘N Sync in 2000. The boy band’s “No Strings Attached” sold 2.416 million albums in its first week.
Adele’s last album, 2011’s “21,” sold more than 11 million units in the United States. The new album’s first single, “Hello,” is spending its fourth week on top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
MORE: Adele’s “Hello” is first song to sell 1 million tracks in a week
To put all these numbers into perspective, only Taylor Swift’s “1989,” (released late last year) Drake’s “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” (released in April) and Ed Sheeran’s “x” (in June 2014) have sold as much as one million copies all year so far.
“There isn’t anybody that I’ve talked to in the music business who hasn’t been astonished by these numbers,” said Dave Bakula, senior vice-president for industry insights at Nielsen.
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Adele did not allow streaming services like Spotify to make “25” available, so people anxious to hear it had to buy the album.
The initial sales are a boost for an industry that has drastically changed over the past decade. In contrast to the four albums that have topped one million in sales this year, there were 88 such discs in 2000, the year ‘N Sync had its big opening, Nielsen said (Sales records date to 1991, when then-SoundScan started keeping track of first-week sales).
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Adele is also leaving Swift in the dust. Her “1989” sold 1.3 million its first week on sale last year, the fastest seller in some time, and Bakula said Adele’s disc is likely to finish the week with more than twice that number sold.
The British singer taped a concert special at New York’s Radio City Music Hall last week that is scheduled to air on Dec. 14 at 10 p.m. ET.
Before she performed on Saturday Night Live, a skit on the show spoke to her wide-ranging popularity. In the skit, a family was squabbling over politics at a Thanksgiving Day dinner, but when a girl put “Hello” on the stereo, everyone stopped arguing to sing along.
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