Adele Becomes First Act Ever To Sell 1m In Two Separate Weeks

Adele has a new record under her name. She has become the first act ever to sell more than one million copies in two consecutive weeks.

The ‘25’ album made history this week after passing the one million mark in week two of sales on the sixth day of the second week. A final tally will be announced on Sunday.

‘25’ is only the 20th album to sell one million copies in one week. In week one it sold 3.38 million for week ending November 26, 2015.

What is interesting is that the Adele album in America is being driven by physical sales. Nielsen Music report that 75% of all Adele ‘25’ albums sold last week were CD.

Adele ’25’ First Week Stats From Nielsen Music

According to Nielsen Music, total U.S. consumption for Adele’s 25 in its first week of release is 3.48 million, which includes 3.378 million album sales, 960,000 digital song sales, and 12.1 million on-demand streams.

25 sales comprise 41% of all U.S. album sales this week (8,202,000 total albums):
• 37.7% of all CD Album sales (4,536,000 total CD Albums / 1,713,000 are 25 CD sales )
• 47.9% of all Digital Album sales (3,431,000 total Digital Albums / 1,644,000 are 25 digital album sales)

25 sales comprise 50.2% of all Mass Merchant album sales (Target, Walmart, Costco, Kmart, Army & Airforce Exchange, etc.).

In Canada, total consumption for 25 is 312,000, including 306,000 Canadian album sales, 61,000 digital songs, and 944,000 on-demand streams.

25 album sales in the U.S. were 51% physical and 49% digital. In Canada, they were 53% digital and 47% physical.

25 broke both the all-time U.S. sales record and the Canadian sales record by its 4th day of its release.

It is the only album to surpass three million in sales in a week in the Nielsen SoundScan era (since 1991), and only the second to sell 2 million in a week.

The U.S. sales record had previously been held by N SYNC’S No Strings Attached since the year 2000 with 2.416 million first-week album sales; the Canadian sales record had previously been held by Celine Dion ‘s ‘Let’s Talk About Love’ since November 1997 with 230,000 first-week sales.