Chart Listings: BB: 25 does 695k pure sales

Adele’s ’25′ Rules for Third Week at No. 1, Coldplay Debuts at No. 2 on Billboard 200
"25" sold 5.19 million copies in the United States in its first three weeks.

On the latest Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Dec. 26), Adele’s 25 crowns the tally for a third straight week. It earned another 728,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Dec. 10, according to Nielsen Music. It was down 37 percent in total units for the week.

Of its weekly sum, 695,000 were in pure album sales. That’s a larger than expected figure, as industry forecasters were expecting it to sell around 650,000.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Dec. 26-dated chart (where Adele is No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s websites on Tuesday, Dec. 15.

This is 25’s third week of selling in excess of 650,000 copies — the first time an album has sold more than 650,000 in each of its first three frames since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991. Four earlier albums managed to sell 650,000 in at least three different weeks, but none were in their first three frames. The last titles to notch three (or more) weeks over 650,000 were The Beatles’ 1 and Backstreet Boys’ Black & Blue, both on the chart dated Jan. 6, 2001.

With 25’s third week sales of 695,000, the album’s total sales climb to 5.19 million. It is now the largest selling album of any calendar year since 2011, when Adele’s previous album, 21, sold 5.82 million. (25 is also the only album to sell 5 million copies in a calendar year since 2011.)

25 is also one of only 11 albums released since 2005 to sell 5 million copies in total.

With three weeks left during the sales tracking year of 2015, it seems likely that 25 will surpass 6 million in sales by Dec. 31 (the final day of the final tracking week of 2015). The last album to sell 6 million in a calendar year was Usher’s Confessions in 2004, with 7.98 million.