Adele's 25 Sold More Copies in One Week Than Any Album Ever

An unprecedented success in US recorded music history, it garnered total album sales volume of more than 3.3 million in its first week. Helping things along is the fact that 25 is not available on any streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music. She also performed a one-night-only exclusive show at Radio City Music Hall on November 17 called "Adele Live in New York City". This year? There are four, with a potential fifth: Taylor Swift's "1989", Drake's "If You're Reading This It's Too Late", Ed Sheeran's "X", Adele's "25", and possibly Sam Smith's "In the Lonely Hour". "25" could do the same, especially as "25" has a bigger head start - "21" sold only 352,000 copies in its first week (that's an "only" by Adele standards). Adele is to be appreciated in the strong marketing strategy when she kept the albums from streaming services.

Backstreet Boys (from left) Howie Dorough, Kevin Richardson, A. J. McLean, Nick Carter and Brian Littrell touch their star after it was unveiled on the Walk of Fame in Los Angeles in April, 2013.

Billboard magazine, which runs the benchmark USA chart, earlier predicted that "25" would sell around 2.9 million copies in its first week in the United States.

Norah Jones during a performance at the White House in May 2014.

Although some like "Send My Love" or "Water Under the Bridge" have a more bouncy and jazzy rhythm, most of this record's songs are of a slower, more meditative pace, and the recurrent themes across her three albums sometimes seem quite repetitive.

The video for Adele's comeback Hello was the biggest debut of any other video this year, and racked up 50 million views in the first 48 hours it was online, beating Taylor Swift's vid for Bad Blood.

Selling 26 million copies of her second album, "21" worldwide. 2 (Justin Bieber's objective, with 184,000) through 100 (the Descendants soundtrack, with 5,000) sold 1.48 million for the week. In comparison, 25 sold around 60,000 physical copies alone in this opening week.