Adele’s ’25’ Album Sets Yet ANOTHER New Sales Record

Adele’s ‘25’ just broke yet another record. It has now sold more copies in the U.S. than any album released since Adele’s own ‘21’ back in 2011.

via Billboard:

As expected, Adele’s 25 holds at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for a fourth week — and by a large margin. The set earned 825,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Dec. 17 (up 13 percent), according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 790,000 were in pure album sales (up 14 percent).

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Jan. 2, 2016-dated chart (where Adele is No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s websites on Tuesday, Dec. 22.

In 25’s first four weeks of release, it sold 5.98 million copies. With its most recent sales week, 25 has surpassed the sales of Taylor Swift’s 1989 (5.57 million) to become the biggest selling album released in the U.S. since Adele’s last album, 21, which was issued in 2011. It has sold 11.37 million.

To put it another way: Adele’s 21 and 25 are the Nos. 1 and 2 biggest selling albums released since 2009. The last album to sell more than 25 was Taylor Swift’s Fearless, which was released in 2008 and has sold 7 million.

25 is also now the largest selling album of any calendar year since 2004, when Usher’s Confessions sold 7.98 million.

Not only all that, but ’25’ is the only album to sell over of 695,000 copies in four different weeks since Nielsen Music began tracking point-of-sale purchases in 1991. Crazy.