Adele’s third album, 25, has only been out for a little over a week now and it has already sold 3.38 million copies in the United States of America.
Yesterday we wrote how Adele has already broken multiple records in the United Kingdom. It is now clear that everyone outside of the UK loves Adele just as much. 25 already has 3× Platinum certifications in Australia with over 210.000 copies sold. The album also has 2× Platinum in Belgium, New Zealand and the UK. Adele is also the first artist to ever sell over three million copies of an album in a single week in the US.
In 2014 the only album to sell over a million copies was Taylor Swift’s 1989. Both Swift and Adele made their albums unavailable for streaming online. Most album sales have dropped over the last decade because of illegal downloading and streaming sites such as Spotify and Apple Music. The artists therefore makes sure that most people will buy their albums, instead of listening to them for free online, by removing them from streaming sites. Earlier this year Taylor Swift wrote an open letter to Apple Music where she explained why she didn’t want her music on their site. Apple did not want to pay musicians and songwriters during a three-month free trial. Apple changed their mind after Swift’s letter, which made her make her album available for streaming.
November of 2015 has proven to be a great month for all musicians. One Direction’s Made In The A.M and Justin Bieber’s Purpose both did well in the charts too, although they aren’t anywhere near Adele’s sales. One can only speculate if they would have had higher album sales if they had chosen the same strategy as Adele and Taylor Swift. However, neither artist can be dissapointed as they both sold over 500.000 copies in the US in the first week. Both were also number one in their respective home countries.
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