Adele set to smash sales records with 25

Adele’s '25' is currently on course to smash records on both sides of the Atlantic - the star’s third album sold approximately 1.9m copies in its first two days on sale in the US and is on target to sell 2.5 million this week (topping NSYNCH's previous record of 2.42 million sales for 'No Strings Attached') and dwarfing the entire first week sales of Taylor Swift’s 1989 last year (1.3m). The 1.9m figure covers just Friday (November 20) and Saturday (November 21), with more than 60% of sales coming on digital download services. In the UK, Official Charts Company data shows that '25' went platinum in a single day – that’s 300,000 sales and sales of the LP are expected to surpass 700,000 sales in the UK by the end of this week. It’s a similar story the world over: 25 was the No.1 album in 106 of iTunes’ 119 territories last night. Whilst the album is not available on freemium streaming services, MBW reports that piracy seems surprisingly low. 

UPDATE

25 broke through the 3m sales barrier in the US yesterday (Wednesday, November 25), according to hot-off-the-presses data from reliable retail monitor BuzzAngle.