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There was no chance that Adele’s 25 wasn’t going to be number one in the UK this week, but that doesn’t make her final sales figures any less impressive. The blockbuster record sold an unbelievable 800,000 copies in the past seven days, which makes it the best-selling number one album of all time. No other artist has ever managed to shift as many units as Adele, and it’s possible that nobody ever will again. The British singer-songwriter smashes the previous first week sales record, which was held by Oasis. The band’s album moved just under 700,000 copies back in 1997.
Of that 800,000, 252,000 copies were paid downloads, which also smashes a previous record. The former most-downloaded album (looking just at the first week) of all time in the UK was Ed Sheeran’s X, which just under 96,000 digital copies in its opening frame.
While the singer’s previous album, 21, was also a massive success in the UK, the first week figures for 25 are several times larger. 21 moved 208,000 copies in its debut week, which was easily enough to make it the number one release in the country and to certify it as a smash hit. While 25 didn’t quite quadruple the first frame’s sales of 21, the fact that it has come even close is incredible. Another interesting tidbit is that 25 has more than ten times the opening week shipments of the singer’s debut album, 19, which moved 73,000 copies.
The original projections for 25 in the UK were somewhere around the 300,000 mark—a number that is close to unheard of for a nation that’s one fifth the size of the United States. To put that number in perspective, there have been very few albums that made it to number one in the US this year that managed to hit that mark, to say nothing of a much smaller population. While that surely would have been enough to snag the number one position, Adele blew past anyone’s expectations, selling 300,000 copies in just the first twenty four hours.
The numbers from around the world are starting to trickle in, with the UK being one of the first countries to report. Numbers from other territories, including the US, are expected by the end of the weekend.
