Adele's latest release, '25', has sold 900,000 iTunes downloads on just its first day of release, and a total of 1.9 million total copies in the U.S. in its first two days, according to just released sales figures. The album is on track to break numerous sales records and become the bona fide smash hit album of 2015.
Adele's ex-lover may not have picked up the calls she made from her flip phone in the video for "Hello", the first single from her new album "25", but the public is picking up her new song collection in record numbers. In just two days, "25" has already surpassed Taylor Swifts "1989" as the top selling album of the year. Swift's record had sold 1.74 million copies in the U.S. as of Nov. 12, so it's safe to say she is already left in the dust, as Adele's disc continues to sell at a remarkable pace.
It also seems a foregone conclusion that "25" will break the record for first week U.S. album sales. The current record holder for that title goes to N'Sync, which sold 2.4 million copies of its smash hit "No Strings Attached" album back in March of 2000. The record keeping for this title begins in 1991 when Nielsen initiated its Soundscan method of accurately tracking retail record sales.
The huge numbers for Adele also raise an interesting question regarding the impact of streaming services on record sales. As we recently reported, Adele made the decision not to stream "25" on Spotify, Apple Music or any other streamer, and now that it appears the move has paid off, the question is whether future superstar releases will follow the same protocol. Although many music listeners have been making the switch from downloading to streaming in the past few years, big stars like Adele, Beyoncé and the aforementioned Taylor Swift have famously withheld their latest album releases from some or all streamers, waiting months until sales have plateaued before introducing them on the services.
It will be interesting to see whether this will become a more prevalent practice going forward, as the three artists mentioned above have also had the biggest selling albums of recent times. New and less popular artists are still likely to continue to release their albums on streamers, which may not afford them the same profits but act as a massive publicity tool. That's why although Adele is not releasing '25' on Spotify, Apple Music and others, the album's first single "Hello" was in fact featured on all of the largest streaming services.
