The lead single from Adele’s “25” is indeed on track to break the weekly US digital single sales record.
Billboard reports that Adele’s “Hello” sold approximately 450,000 digital US downloads during its first two days of release. While its pace will slow over the remaining five days of the October 23-29 tracking week, “Hello” should still be able to challenge the 636,000 weekly digital sales record held by Flo Rida’s “Right Round.”
It has already set a new record for Adele, who had never before sold more than 353,000 US copies in a week. Her Grammy-winning “Rolling In The Deep” is responsible for that total.
Readers should noted that Hits Daily Double reported a 400,000 opening day US sales total for Adele’s “Hello.” The single’s sales pace did not suffer an 88% slowdown in day two, which means there is a disparity between the two reports.
At press time, it was unclear whether Hits’ number was incorrectly high, whether Hits’ number neglected to remove pre-order-fueled instant gratification downloads (which no longer count as single sales) from the total, or whether Billboard’s number is incorrectly low.
What is clear is that “Hello” is selling like hotcakes.