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Adele's '25' sells more than 4M in 10 days

Patrick Ryan
USA TODAY
Adele performs on the "Today" show on Nov. 25 to promote her latest release, "25." The album sold a record-breaking 3.38 million copies in its first week.

Hello from the record books.

Adele's blockbuster 25 is the fastest selling album ever with more than 4 million copies sold in 10 days, according to Nielsen Music. That places it well ahead of the 2.5 million it was projected to move in the week following its Nov. 20 release.

Already, the benchmarks are piling up. Not only is 25 the biggest selling album of the year so far (besting the 1.8 million copies Taylor Swift's 1989 sold in 2015), it's also the highest selling since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking album sales in 1991. In just four days, 25 broke the previous one-week sales record set by NSYNC's No String Attached (2.4 million in 2000).

"She's breaking a record that was set in 2000, and that was a year when we sold 785 million albums. We're probably going to sell 250 million albums this year," says Dave Bakula, Nielsen's senior vice president of industry insights. "This is not just breaking a record set when albums were really selling in 2000 — this is breaking a record at a time when streaming is becoming one of the biggest portions of the industry." (25 is not currently streaming in its entirety anywhere, making the sales feat bigger.)

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Even in the heyday of icons such as The Beatles or Elvis Presley, "I have a really hard time believing that anything could have done as well or any better than what Adele has done this first week," Bakula adds.

In its first week alone, 25 made up 41% of all album sales in the USA: 51% of which were physical copies and 49% digital. It debuted atop the Billboard 200 album chart this week — making it Adele's second No. 1 album after her similarly mammoth 21, which returns to the chart's Top 10 at No. 9 (34,000 sold).  When 21 arrived in February 2011, it moved 352,000 copies its first week and went on to sell more than 11 million in the USA to date.

So just how high might 25 go? NSYNC's No Strings moved an additional 811,000 copies in its second week — a number 25 could potentially beat. "My guess is that she doesn't get quite to a million this week, but that would be a pretty neat story if she did over a million two weeks in a row," Bakula says.

Through the end of the year, "it's going to be a steady seller, especially because you can't stream it," says Billboard senior editor Alex Gale. "Now that it's become this historic album, people who didn't buy it at first are going to buy it to see what all the hype's about. Plus, it's a pretty safe holiday gift to give to anyone."

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As for whether it can top 21's astronomic sales, "I don't know if we'll see it on that level," Vulture senior editor Jillian Mapes says. "There's not the discovery aspect of people finding her and the slow burn, but through the end of the year, we'll see very significant sales," topping out anywhere between 5 and 6 million copies total. Add in a slew of potential singles — including When We Were Young, Water Under the Bridge and Send My Love (To Your New Lover) — and the possibility of a strong showing at the 2017 Grammy Awards, and 25 won't be slowing down in the foreseeable future.

"Everyone said she couldn't top the phenomenon of 21, because when people have those types of albums, it's magic and they can never really get that again," Mapes says. "Even Michael Jackson: Bad couldn't top Thriller. I don't know if Adele will necessarily surpass 21, but she'll be relatively in the same ballpark once this whole campaign shakes out."

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