Although her massive world tour is heading into its final run, nothing seems to be stopping Adele’s current album 25 from continuing to smash chart milestones to smithereens, with the news that her third album has already been certified diamond in the United States in under 12 months.
The 27 year old megastar released the album on November 20th last year, but Entertainment Weekly reported on Tuesday (September 27th) that it has already shifted more than 10 million copies in the States, enough to award it a diamond certification from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Adele’s ’25’ has sold 10 million copies in less than a year
Impressively, this achievement has been reached even faster than her previous album 21, the record that made the British singer into a worldwide household name. 21 passed the ten-million mark in November 2012, 22 months after its release in January of 2011.
With current sales of 21 standing at 11.5 million, it’s entirely likely that Adele will be able to surpass that mark with 25 – something that even the most optimistic executives at her label XL thought would be highly unlikely.
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However, the album has proved consistently popular since it obliterated all-time records for the highest first-week sales in Billboard history, when it shifted 3.38 million copies in seven days. It had already passed eight million sales by the end of 2015.
In the age of streaming and declining physical sales, very few albums come even vaguely close to selling 10 million copies any more – indeed, only five or six dozen records have ever done so. She has been hailed by some parts of the industry as a saviour, having more or less single-handedly kept up physical sales of records.
Executives must therefore have been worried by recent reports that Adele plans to take anything from five to ten years off from music when she’s wrapped her Adele Live 2016 tour on November 21st. She’s said to want prioritise watching her son Angelo grow up once he starts school, meaning he won’t be able to go on tour with her.
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