London, Nov 29, : .According to a Billboard Sunday night announcement, Adele’s 30′ had the largest opening sales of any blockbuster album in 2021 with 839,000 equivalent units.Variety.com reports that her big premiere beats Drake’s ‘Certifiable Lover Boy,’ which was released in September with 613,000.
It also ranks ahead of Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ (Taylor’s Version), which, just a week ago, had the second-biggest album debut of the year with 905,000 units.Now, it is moved to the third largest of 2021.
As was the case with Swift’s huge debut last week, full-album sales accounted for the largest portion of Adele’s total.
These two stars are generally regarded to be the last two who can guarantee massive sales of physical products — CDs and the more popular vinyl versions.
The actual album sales for ’30’ were staggering at 692,000, the highest ever recorded for any release in this year’s history.
Billboard reported that ’30’ had 185 million streams on-demand during its first week.
Although vinyl sales can surpass CD sales for many artists today, Adele fans were first attracted to the compact disc.Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version)’ holds the record for most LPs sold in a single week.
Adele’s album sales totalled 378,000 CDs and 108,000 vinyl copies.
With 205,000 sold, digital album sales were in between the two formats.Only 2,000 serious completists purchased a cassette version that was sold only in the artist’s website store.
These numbers are unquestionably massive by today’s standards, but the unit figure doesn’t even come close to what Adele’s previous album, ‘25’, did six years ago.The year 2015 was a different time for physical sales and record-breaking album numbers.’25’ debuted with 3.38m copies, still a world record.
Adele’s album was released just one week before Black Friday promotions saw Adele racks at the front of Target stores.Next week, she’s expected to have another big sales figure and will likely hold the No.1 spot for the remainder 2021.There are no other superstar releases scheduled.
Billboard’s other top 10 debut was a Raising the Roof, Robert Plant’s and Alison Krauss’ first joint album in 14-years.It landed at No.It was No.7 with 40,000 albums units.
Like Adele, Plant & Krauss have a mature market that wants to own the record and not stream it.Out of that 40K, 38,000 were full albums.
Among the holdovers, ‘Red (Taylor’s Version),’ was no surprise.It slipped to No.2 with 159,000 album equivalent units in week 2.
Drake’s album rose a few spots to No.The debut album by Silk Sonic, a collaborative effort, fell two spots to No.4, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous:The Double Album” moved up one notch and reached No.5, Summer Walker’s “Still Over It,” fell a few spots to No.6 in its third week.
Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” climbed back into the Top 10 at No.8.Michael Buble’s Christmas album, which recently got a reissue with new bonus tracks, was the first holiday album to climb the ranks this year.It landed at No.9.
The Weeknd’s greatest hits collection, “The Highlights”, was out almost since the beginning of the year, but it finally came out on vinyl.It received a huge chart rebound.
Billboard reported that 91 percent of the Weeknd’s hits were sold in the LP format.
dc/dpb #Adeles #biggest
