Adele breaks another record with second-week US sales

Adele's album "25" has broken another record, selling more than one million albums in the United States in its second week after a massive debut, a tracking service said Sunday.

By sustaining huge success for a second week, the British singer becomes the first artist to sell more than one million albums in two separate weeks since at least 1991, when Nielsen Music began systematic data.

"25" sold 1.1 million albums in the week through Thursday, bringing to 4.49 million copies the total US sales since it came out on November 20, Nielsen Music said.

Sales could still go much higher, considering the holiday shopping season and Adele's past performance.

Her previous album, "21," has sold more than 11 million copies in the United States since its release in 2011, topping year-end charts for two consecutive years.

"25" has also broken records in Adele's native Britain, selling more than one million copies in 10 days -- the fastest album to reach that feat.

The album, led by the blockbuster single "Hello," is like much of Adele's earlier work a collection of emotionally intense ballads with themes of heartache and childhood nostalgia.
Her success is all the more striking as album sales as a whole have dropped markedly since the rise of online music two decades ago.

Unusually for a pop star in the current era, Adele has not made "25" available on streaming services such as Spotify and invests less time than many of her peers in social media interaction.

With the record sales, Adele alone is helping boost sales for the recorded music industry.

Offering a more detailed glance at her first week, Nielsen Music said that "25" accounted for 37.7 percent of all album sales in the United States, in a month that saw new releases from other big pop names including Justin Bieber and One Direction.

The sales were nearly evenly divided between physical and digital, with Adele putting "25" for purchase on iTunes despite her boycott of streaming.