Just this past Friday, we saw the release of Adele’s highly anticipated third studio album, 25. Kicked off by the lead single, ‘Hello,’ going forth to go No. 1 atop the Billboard Hot 100 within it’s first week of availability, the achievement was an early prediction of the storm that Adele was about to bring forth on the music industry. Making a bold move and not allowing her new album to be made available via any streaming services, that left for only physical and digital retailers to have the album made available for listening, outside of the rampant problem of illegal downloads. Now, as we’re almost 3 full days in of the album being accessible for purchase, early reads are showing that Adele’s 25 may go on to sell 2.5 million copies within its first week and therefore break N’SYNC’s record that was set their No Strings Attached album.
After one day on sale, Adele’s 25 appears set to break *NSYNC’s long-standing one-week Nielsen-era U.S. album sales record of 2.42 million sold, according to industry forecasters. Sources say the set is on track to sell at least 2.5 million in pure album sales in its first week, and sold more than 900,000 copies alone through the iTunes Store on its first day of release.
This can only be described as a phenomenon that isn’t seen too often in the music industry, as a whole. It also serves as a refreshing reminder that gimmicks are not always needed to generate public interest for new music. Stripping things back and putting forth a rather minimalistic campaign thus far, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Adele-season went well into 2016.
