Instant Alert: How Adele's record-breaking 3.38 million sales of '25' compare to Taylor Swift's '1989'

MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE   How Adele's record-breaking 3.38 million sales of '25' compare to Taylor Swift's '1989' by Anjelica Oswald on Nov 29, 2015, 3:12 PM Advertisement Adele's "25" has destroyed music records, and it's only been out for a week. In its first four days, the album sold more than 2.4 million copies, becoming the highest-selling album in its debut week in the US. The previous record was held by *NSYNC's "No Strings Attached," which sold 2.4 million records during its opening week in 2000.  Now that the full week's sales have been tallied, we know Adele's "25" sold 3.38 million copies, according to Nielsen. There is simply no comparison to be made between Adele and other contemporary music, said David Bakula, senior vice president of industry insights at Nielsen Entertainment.  "You run out of superlatives to describe something like this. There is no precedent for something this big," Bakula told Business Insider. "It’s not just that she's breaking the record, but we're now in a day and age where music consumption has changed so dramatically. You can’t overstate how important and incredible a feat it is that this record is getting to the level that it is." Bakula pointed out that when *NSYNC beat the record, there were no streaming services available, so more people were buying albums. In 2000, 88 albums sold more than a million copies. This year? There are four, with a potential fifth: Taylor Swift's "1989," Drake's "If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late," Ed Sheeran's "X," Adele's "25," and possibly Sam Smith's "In the Lonely Hour."  To put Adele's sales in perspective, we've compared them to Swift's "1989," which, up until the release of "25," was the highest-selling album of the year (though it came out last year). SEE ALSO: The incredibly successful life of 10-time Grammy winner Adele, and how the world's best singer was discovered "1989" sold 1.287 million copies in its debut week in 2014, becoming the first album that wasn't a Swift album to reach a million in a week since Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" in 2011. Swift's "Red" and "Speak Now" albums sold more than a million records in their debut weeks, making her the only musician to have three albums do so. It became the 19th album to sell a million copies in a week since Nielsen's SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991. "You looked at those numbers and thought you’d never see those numbers again. And ['25'] is going to do twice that,” Bakula said (it actually ended up doing more).  "25" has sold 3.38 million copies in its debut week, becoming the highest-selling album in its first week ever in the US according to available chart numbers. After one week, "1989" was the second-highest-selling album of the year behind "Frozen" in 2014. It became the best-selling record with 3.66 million copies sold by the end of the year. See the rest of the story at Business Insider   Share the latest business news with your network: Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011