Adele by the numbers

25, 21, 19: It all adds up to record sales of millions

NEW YORK Hello, it’s Adele, and she’s going to give the music industry a much-needed boost this year with 25.

The singer’s hotly anticipated album, released Friday, is projected to sell more than a million units in its debut week, helping the ailing record business in the final quarter of the year.

“So far, the fourth-quarter numbers have been pretty tough,” said David Bakula, Nielsen Entertainment’s senior vice-president of industry insights.

Bakula said Taylor Swift’s 1989, which was released last October and sold more than three million albums in roughly two months last year, helped 2014 close on a strong note.

“We’re down about 20 per cent year-over-year because we are going up against that Taylor Swift record with nothing at this point,” he said. “But once the Adele record comes out, I don’t think there’s anybody that doubt(s) that this thing can sell very comparably, if not a little better on a week-over-week basis than Taylor Swift did last year.”

Some insiders are predicting 25 will sell 1.5 million units in its first week. And the album will easily become the top-selling release of 2015 (so far that title goes to 1989, which has sold 1.7 million units this year, and overall has moved 5.4 million albums).

25 is the followup to 2011’s 21, which has sold 11.23 million albums in the United States. With no sales figures available yet for Adele’s new album, 21 and the singer’s 2008’s debut, 19, were No. 24 and 66 on Billboard’s 200 albums chart, respectively.

In just three weeks, the single Hello has sold 2.2 million tracks.

“Her manager played me a couple songs and it’s very exciting to hear something of that quality doing that well.

And at the same time, it’s concerning that there aren’t many more things of that quality,” Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine said.

“She came in and did something pure, simple and just plain ole great, and that works. There’s a lot of great artists in the world right now, but she set the bar as far as quality and commerciality.”