Adele Will Say Good-“Bye Bye Bye” To NSync

Folks, we have breaking news. Adele’s 21 has sold 3 million copies in the US on its first week beating NSync’s No Strings Attached from 2000. This will make the first album by a female artist to sell more copies than Taylor Swift’s 1989 in the US during its first week since Britney Spears’s Oops I Did It Again 15 years ago.

Speaking of Britney Spears, it seems that Adele’s 25 finally beats Britney Spears’s Oops It Did It Again making it the most albums by a female artist sold in the US during its first week. In fact, Adele’s 25, according to Nielsen Music, has sold 2,433,000 copies in its first 4 days, breaking the single-week record for album sales with the album selling over 900,000 digital copies on ITunes in the US in its first day on sale. The mark was previously held by NSync for their 2000 release No Strings Attached, which tallied 2,416,000 sales for the week ending on March 26, 2000.

These sales figures are particularly meaningful, as the NSync record was set in an era of CDs of the 1982-2004 era, and paying for digital music downloads and streaming music were years away. Adele and her record labels Columbia and XL made the strategic decision this time around to withhold 25 from streaming services like Spotify.

Columbia Records declined to comment on the sales numbers. The Journal reached out to Adele for comment.

According to Dave Bakula, senior vice President of industry insights for Nielsen Music, the sales so far are split about 50/50 in terms of CD and digital sales of 25.

“[In 2000], the album was the only point of entry for people,” Bakula says. “This thing is going to be pushing close to three million by the end of the week, a number I don’t think anybody in the industry thought we’d see, ever. It’s crazy.”

Bakula doesn’t know whether the decision to withhold 25 from streaming services helped bolster sales, but he does worry that other artists will see this and think they can replicate the same success. “The thing that concerns me the most is that other artists that aren’t names Taylor or Adele are going to think this is the right strategy for them. And this doesn’t work for everybody like it does for Adele.”

The 25 rollout was relatively short as with the album’s announcement occurring just a month ago with the music video for Hello broke YouTube viewing records and the album sold almost 1 million copies in the US via ITunes in its first day on sale. This resulted to sell more than 900,000 copies on November 20 on its way to what is expected to be the biggest opening week in US album sales, history according to Billboard.

So Bakula never thought he’d see anyone break NSync’s long-standing sales record. “Every single person in the industry has said ‘I never thought I’d see this,’” he says. “It’s the double-rainbow with the unicorn at the end.”

Congrats, Adele. You deserve it. I’m really excited to hear 25 when 25 will be available for streaming pretty soon. Good thing Pandora uploads it. Yay.

What do you think? Are you happy that 25 sold 900k copies on US ITunes in just a day? Are you happy that Adele sold more copies than NSync’s No Strings Attached during its first week? Is this record a good move? Sound off below!