Since releasing her new album ’25’ last Friday [20th Nov] and announcing that the album will not appear on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, Adele has been smashing a number of records as if it was nothing. The move to not allow the album on streaming sites is risky move but one done to increase what would have already been extremely high sales projections. It seems to have paid off for Adele as Billboard reported on Monday [23rd Nov] that the album had already gone double platinum– over the course of a weekend. In just three days, 25 had sold 2.3 million units, according to Nielsen Music. To put that into perspective, only 2 other albums that have sold over a million units in a week this year – Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ and Drake’s ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late‘ and Adele outsold both of them over the course of 72 hours.
But that isn’t even the most impressive record Adele has broken this week. By Tuesday [24th Nov], Adele’s sales had moved up to 2.433 million copies and this smashed the single week U.S album sales record. The previous holders were boyband N*SYNC whose album ‘No Strings Attached’ sold 2.416 million copies in it’s first week in 2000. It’s clear that former members of the band can only applaud the success of what Adele has accomplished, with Lance Bass commenting; “In all honesty, Adele is the truth — kinda excited a rare talent like hers is in the same breath as our group. I’m a huge fan….I even bought the damn album.”
While we wait to see what her full week sales will be, which will be released on Friday, its going to be a tough record to break. While Adele has already had the Best Selling Album of the year (so far), the general sale of albums is rapidly declining. While we noted before that only three albums have sold over a million units this year, in the year 2000, 88 albums had done the same. This statistic just goes to show how the use of technology and streaming services are rapidly affecting the album sales market. With that in mind, has Adele done the unthinkable and broken a record that no-one thought could be broken and no-one could ever come close to again.