Adele’s “30”An announcement by announcing that Blockbuster Albums had their biggest opening numbers in 2021 was correct. It saw 839,000 equivalent units. BillboardSunday night
Adele’s big premiere beats the previous mark set by Drake’s “Certifiable Lover Boy”It bowed with 613,000 in September. It also comes in ahead of Taylor Swift’s “Red (Taylor’s Version),”This album, which had just one week ago the second-biggest, sold 905,000 albums units and is now the third largest in 2021.
The biggest part of Adele’s tally came in full-album sales, as was true of Swift’s massive debut last week. These two superstars are generally regarded as the last two who are guaranteed to sell massive amounts of physical product — CDs as well as the more in-vogue vinyl versions. “30”The album sold a staggering 692,000, the highest number of any release this year.
But “30”Billboard reports that the streaming industry was not in decline with 185,000,000 on-demand streams registered during its first week.
Although vinyl sales can outdo CD sales for many artists nowadays, Adele fans were attracted first and foremost to the compact disc, so Swift’s “Red (Taylor’s Version)”Still holds the record for selling the most LPs in a given week.
Adele’s album sales amounted to 378,000 as CDs and 108,000 in the vinyl format. (Variety previously reported, that Sony Music had sold over half a million copies of LPs. “30”To be prepared for the holiday season, and beyond. With 205,000 downloaded albums, digital album sales were in the middle of these two formats. A cassette version sold exclusively in the artist’s web store sold just under 2,000 to serious completists.
The numbers are indisputably huge by today’s standards, although the unit figure doesn’t come close to matching what Adele’s previous album, “25,”It did six years ago when it was first released. 2015 is a completely different time in terms of physical sales and stupendous album numbers. “25”debuted with 3.38 millions copies, an all-time record.
With Adele’s album having been released just a week before Black Friday promotions that saw Adele racks being positioned at the front of Target stores, she’s due for another big sales number next week, and a likely stronghold on the No, 1 position for the remainder of 2021, with no other superstar releases currently scheduled to come out.
The other debut in Billboard’s top 10 was “Raising the Roof,” Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ first joint album in 14 years. It landed at No. 7. It sold 40,000 units. Plant and Krauss are like Adele. They have a mature market that wants the record to be their own, and not listened to. Only 38,000 of those 40K sales were for full albums.
Among the holdovers: “Red (Taylor’s Version)”It was no surprise that this album was the most popular, and it slipped to No. 2. with 159,000 album equivalent units in week two.
Drake’s album moved up a couple of spots to No. 3, Silk Sonic’s collaborative debut fell two spots to No. 4, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album”Moved up one notch to No. 5, and Summer Walker’s “Still Over It”It dropped a few spots to No. 6, in its third week.
Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour”Returned to the Top 10 at No. 8. Michael Buble’s “Christmas,”It just got a reissue with bonus tracks and became the first holiday album to climb the ranks this year, reaching No. 9.
The Weeknd’s greatest-hits collection, “The Highlights,”Although it had been available digitally since the start of the year, the song saw a significant chart rebound after finally being released on vinyl. Billboard said 91% of the sales for the Weeknd’s hits set this week for in the LP format.
The entire Billboard 200 Album Chart for this week will be made available Tuesday.