Today’s numbers thread is brought to you by the letters “A”, “D”, “E”, “L” and “E”.
In case you have been living under a rock the last week, Adele has the number one album and single of the week. Here numbers are nothing short of amazing.Billboard has a rundown of all of Adele’s achievements. 3.38M albums sold (a record). 41% of all albums sold were “25”. The rate at which the album sold was 335 per minute. “25” sold twice what the number 2-100 sold combined. It goes on and on and on.
Oh, and she has already sold 4M. She sold 650K copies over the weekend. Most artists dream of selling that many copies of their album.
All hail Queen Adele.
And Prince Bieber. If not for Adele, we’d be gushing about Bieber (well, some would be gnashing their teeth about him). Seriously, the kid (okay, he’s now an adult) is doing impressive all on his own. He has the number 2 album this week and the number 2, 4 and 7th single this week (“Sorry”, “What Do You Mean” and “Love Yourself”). His combined album sales dropped a mere 55% for 290k in sales. That’s a good week by any definition.
Hits has an interesting article about these two. They’ve both thrown out the rule book and both proven to be successes. Adele has eschewed social media and streaming and her sales have boomed. Bieber has embraced social media and streaming and it doesn’t appear to be hurting his sales. Bieber was a washed-up teen star and Adele took a long break between albums. Both of these show that marketing campaigns need to be focused on the fan base. There is no one size fits all.
As for the rest of the albums, One Direction has a pretty good week at number 3 and Pentatonix has a great week moving into the top 10 with their Christmas album at 6th.
Canadians continue to rule the Hot 100 with Bieber’s three slots, Drake’s “Hotline Bling” at 3rd, The Weeknd’s “The Hills” at 5th, Shawn Mendes’s “Stitches” at 6th. (slots 2-7 – Canadian) and Alessia Cara’s “Here” at 10th (7 slots for those Canadians). Meghan Trainor’s “Like I’m Going to Love You” is 8th and Fetty Wap’s “679” is 9th
