Adele’s ‘25’ sells more than 4M in 10 days
Hello from the record books. Adele’s blockbuster 25 is the fastestselling album ever with more than 4 million copies sold in 10 days, according to Nielsen Music. That places it well ahead of the 2.5 million it was projected to sell in the week after its release Nov. 20.
Already, the benchmarks are piling up. Not only is 25 the biggest-selling album of the year (besting the 1.8 million copies Taylor Swift’s 1989 sold in 2015), it’s also the highest-selling since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking album sales in 1991. In just four days, 25 broke the one-week sales record set by NSYNC’s
No String Attached (2.4 million in 2000). “She’s breaking a record that was set in 2000, and that was a year when we sold 785 million albums. We’re probably going to sell 250 million albums this year,” says Dave Bakula, Nielsen’s senior vice president of industry insights.
“This is not just breaking a record set when albums were really selling in 2000 — this is breaking a record at a time when streaming is becoming one of the biggest portions of the industry.” (25 is not streaming now anywhere in its entirety, making the sales feat bigger.)
Even in the heyday of icons such as The Beatles or Elvis Presley, “I have a really hard time believing that anything could have done as well or any better than what Adele has done this first week,” Bakula says.
In its first week, 25 made up 41% of all album sales in the USA, 51% of which were physical copies and 49% digital. It made its debut atop the Billboard 200 album chart this week — making it Adele’s second No. 1 album after her similarly huge 21, which returns to the chart’s Top 10 at No. 9 (34,000 sold). When 21 arrived in February 2011, it moved 352,000 copies its first week and went on to sell more than 11 million in the USA to date.
So just how high might 25 go? NSYNC’s No Strings moved an additional 811,000 copies in its second week — a number 25 could beat.
“My guess is that she doesn’t get quite to a million this week, but that would be a pretty neat story if she did over a million two weeks in a row,” Bakula says.
Through the end of the year, “it’s going to be a steady seller, especially because you can’t stream it,” says Billboard senior editor Alex Gale. “Now that it’s become this historic album, people who didn’t buy it at first are going to buy it to see what all the hype’s about. Plus, it’s a pretty safe holiday gift.”
As for whether it can top 21‘s astronomic sales, Vulture senior editor Jillian Mapes says, “There’s not the discovery aspect of people finding her and the slow burn, but ... we’ll see very significant sales,” topping out anywhere between 5 and 6 million copies total.