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Adele’s ’25’ On Track To Break One Week U.S. Album Sales Record — Over 900,000 Already Sold First Day On iTunes!

By Janice Malcolm
Published on: 10:00 PST, Nov 21, 2015

Ever since Adele snuck back into the spotlight and dropped “Hello,” anticipation has been high for the release of her album, and Friday’s release did not disappoint. The fact that the album was reportedly leaked shows no signs of affecting 25’s sales, as it is already well on its way to breaking old records and setting a whole new bar for album sales.

The new album has reportedly already sold over 900,000 copies through the iTunes store since yesterday, and according to industry sources, she is well on track to demolish the 15-year-old record ‘NSYNC’s No Strings Attached created by selling over 2.42 million records within the first week of sales. Adele’s 25 is projected to reach sales of 2.5 million, and should the prediction come through, it will also join No Strings Attached and become the second album to ever cross into sales figures of over 2 million within its first week.

Adele’s third studio album, all three named after the age she was when they came out, was released on Nov. 20 through XL/Columbia Records. The album 25 was not made available through any of the streaming services other artists so often use, and USA Today reported that anyone who wanted access to the album had to pay up. The 900,000 iTunes record naturally does not include CD sales, but if anyone can bring back the era of purchasing a CD it will surely be Adele. Of course you have to prepare yourself for the tears that inevitably come with any of Adele’s albums.

Nielsen Music began tracking U.S. album sales in 1991 and according to their expertise, Adele is definitely set to take over their record holder ‘NSYNC. There is no way to compare to record sales prior to the 1991 Nielsen system, as albums sales were simply not tracked prior to this, in fact sales figures for singles was also not tracked.

Nielsen Music’s weekly tracking runs from Friday through to Thursday of every week and as such 25‘s first week sales information will be collected until November 26. The album sales figures are scheduled to be made public by Billboard and various media outlets on November 29, once Nielsen Music has finished processing the weekly data. A breakdown of the projected sales has revealed that over 1.5 million of the 3.6 million physical copies of the 25 album shipped to retailers will be sold within the first week. While it is forecasted that over 1 million digital copies would be sold, when combined, the number reveals that 2.5 million first week projection. However, considering the fact that iTunes is already reporting that the very first day alone racked up 900,000 of that 1 million, those numbers may easily be surpassed.

If even just 100,000 more of those iTunes sales come in, then Adele’s 25 will join 19 other albums who have sold at least 1 million records during the first week since the introduction if the Nielsen system. Of course, that is not the only noteworthy thing the album does, as it is on track to be the biggest selling album of 20i5 as well. If the numbers hold, 25 will kick Taylor Swift’s 1989 out of the top spot for 2015; up to November 12, Swift’s album has sold 1.74 million copies total.

The December 12 release of the Billboard 200 album charts also seems fated to debut 25 at the No. 1 spot and if this does actually occur, it will be the second time Adele has managed to claim the spot. Her second album, 21, was her first time leading the list, and Adele ended up spending 24 wonderful weeks (nonconsecutive) at No. 1 then, and was the first female to have an album accomplish such a goal. That album, 21, was the 10th best selling album of the Nielsen era, and, to date, has sold over 11.23 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Speculation is rampant that 25 could make Adele the very first artist to sell a million copies of their album in more than one week.

[Picture Courtesy of s_burkley/Shutterstock]

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