After processing the first sales reports from Monday, Nov. 23, that sum beats the single-week record for an album set by NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, which tallied 2,416,000 sales for the week ending on March 26, 2000.
Nielsen Music began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. Prior to 1991, there was no authoritative music sales tracking service in the U.S.
Adele’s ‘25’ also became the top-selling album of 2015 overtaking the 1.7 million copies of Taylor Swift’s “1989.”
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The success of ‘25’ is being echoed in markets around the world, including the UK, and bolsters Adele’s status as the biggest-selling recording artist of the past decade.
The 27 year old, who was educated at the Brit School in south London, the same stage school as Amy Winehouse and Leona Lewis, sold more than 30m copies of her last album, “21” which won multiple Grammys including Album of the Year.
Adele made news last week when the singer and her record labels Columbia and XL made the strategic decision to restrict the album from being streamed on any streaming service including Apple Music and Spotify.
Presently, industry forecasters suggest the album could finish the week with 2.9 million sold. Billboard is scheduled to report ‘25’ debut week sales on Sunday, Nov. 29, once Nielsen has finished processing its weekly data.
According to Dave Bakula, senior vice President of industry insights for Nielsen Music, the sales of ‘25’ will keep increasing.
He said: “This thing is going to be pushing close to three million by the end of the week, a number I don’t think anybody in the industry thought we’d see, ever. It’s crazy.”
“25” is Adele’s third studio album, which followed other numerical named albums “19” and “21.”