Adele broke all records this week, selling 3.46 million copies of her “25” album from Friday through Thursday. That includes streaming. Without streaming, hitsdailydouble.com calls it at 3,354,773. *the with streaming total is 3,468,558.
It’s a staggering number and quite a feat. It will also merit discussion for some time. “25” is now the presumed Grammy Award winner in February 2017– not this February because it was released too late. Can “25” survive 18 months and ride the charts all that time? Or is that the bulk of the sales? At this point, who doesn’t have it?
Meanwhile Justin Bieber sold around 300,000 copies of “Purpose,” and kept his momentum going from his first week. One Direction is doing well, but around a third of that number. Funny since their album is superior to Bieber’s monotone over bird noises. But marketing won the day in that face off.
Now we wait to see how Adele fares in her second week. Can she keep it up? Her NBC Radio City special airs December 14th. Can anyone knock her off that perch? I doubt it.