Adele smashes single-week US album sales record in four days

A view of a billboard for Adele's new album, 25 in New York. EPA

NEW YORK (REUTERS) - British singer Adele has broken the single-week US album sales record in just four days with her new release 25, Nielsen Music said on Tuesday.

Total sales for the album, released on Friday, have surpassed 2.43 million copies, smashing a 15-year-old record set by boy band NSync's 2000 album No Strings Attached, Nielsen said.

The NSync album sold 2.41 million copies in its first week.

The huge Adele sales figures come at a time when artists rarely top one million in opening week sales because of the rise of online streaming of music.

Taylor Swift's 1989 album was the last record to achieve the milestone when it opened last year with nearly 1.3 million copies for the week.

Like Swift, Adele and her independent record company XL Recordings decided to withhold 25 from streaming platforms such as Apple's Apple Music service, privately owned Spotify and Google Play.

25 is Adele's first album since her 2011 release 21, which won six Grammy awards and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

The first single, Hello, which debuted last month has sold more than 2.5 million digital copies and has been on top of Billboard's Digital Songs chart for four consecutive weeks.

25 sales data for the first full week will be released by Nielsen on Nov 30.

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