Adele’s 25 Makes History With 3.38 Million First Week Copies Sold

Adele’s smash hit song “Hello” is officially number one for the fifth week in a row on the Billboard Hot 100 & it’s nonetheless breaking records.

To give you an idea of just how many copies 25 sold, if you added up the first-week sales of the most recent albums by Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and One Direction, together, they still wouldn’t total as many albums as 25 managed to shift. It sold 4.41 million copies in 2012, and 5.82 million copies in 2011, the year of its release.

“25”, Adele’s third studio album, was released on November 20. This made Adele kick N’SYNC off the throne as the now defunct boy band was the last artist to hold the said record with their album “No Strings Attached” selling 2.4 million copies in March 26, 2000.

It was the only album to surpass 3 million sales in one week since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991, Nielsen Music said. Additionally, the Adele’s 25 album sold more than 800,000 copies in Canada and in Britain, and Adele is planning a tour in Britain and in Europe starting next year in February.

21 is now the tenth highest selling album of all time, so with 25’s big head start right out of the gate, we’re pretty sure that she’s about to make some history. Sales of “25” have also had a positive effect on album sales as a whole, boosting the chart market by 21 per cent compared to the previous week.

Billboard is scheduled to report 25’s second-week sales Sunday, Dec. 6, once Nielsen has finished processing its weekly data.