Everyone may have seen it coming, but it doesn’t make it any less mind-blowing. Just three days after its official release, Adele’s eagerly anticipated third album, 25, is on track to be the fastest-selling album of all time.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, the 27-year-old singer’s latest full-length effort has officially sold more copies in the US in its first week than any other album in history, and the week’s not even over yet.
In an age when musicians are struggling to sell albums, 25 managed to sell more than 2.4 million copies in just over three days, smashing the single-week US album sales record, previously held by NSYNC.
The UK vocal talent’s album sales are currently sitting at 2,433,000 copies, the highest total since Nielsen began tracking album sales in 1991. What took Justin Timberlake and co a week to do in 2000, Adele managed in just a few days in 2015.
The record isn’t doing too shabbily in Australia, either. It took 25 just three days to achieve triple platinum ARIA accredited sales in Australia, which means the album has sold an incredible 210,000 units in less than a week.
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you it was a foregone conclusion the album would break records. Earlier this month, the lead single from the album, ‘Hello’, became the first single to sell more than one million downloads in a single week in the US.
As it stands, 25 is tipped to be nudging sales of three million by the end of this week. Part of 25‘s massive sales could be attributed to the fact that the album is not available to stream in full on any streaming services.
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As The Verge reports, the album is available to hear on Pandora, which does not operate through direct deals with record labels, but is covered by a law governing “non-interactive” streaming services since it is essentially an online radio station.
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Adele’s decision to omit her new album from streaming platforms mimics Taylor Swift’s move last year not to offer her blockbuster 1989 via streaming services, a move that was widely publicised and hailed by fellow musicians.
Adele is one of the most successful recording artists of all time, with her second album, 21, back in the charts thanks to the release of 25. That album has sold more than 30 million copies since its release in 2011, with more than one million in Australia alone.
Reckon it’s impossible to sell records in this day and age? No, clearly you just have to be Adele.
TOP TEN FIRST-WEEK US ALBUM SALES
*NSYNC – No Strings Attached
*NSYNC – Celebrity
Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
Backstreet Boys – Black and Blue
Britney Spears – Oops I did it Again
Taylor Swift – 1989
Taylor Swift – Red
50 Cent – The Massacre
Backstreet Boys – Millennium
Lady Gaga – Born This Way
