Image:British singer Adele arrives at the 54th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California February 12, 2012. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/files
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – British singer Adele smashed records with her comeback single “Hello”, selling more than 1.1 million digital songs in the first week and becoming the first song ever to break the 1 million download mark on the Billboard charts.
Adele also roundly beat Canadian teen heartthrob Justin Bieber, whose latest single “Sorry” sold 276,800 downloads in its debut week, taking second place, according to data released by Nielsen Music on Monday for the past week.
“Hello” was the first single from Adele’s upcoming new album “25”, to be released this month, and follows a four-year break from music after her “21” album won six Grammy awards and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
“Hello” was streamed 47.5 million times globally on Spotify, making it the most-streamed song over a week in the online streaming platform’s history.
The music video also broke records at entertainment platform Vevo.com, delivering more than 27 million views in the first 24 hours after its release last week.
Nielsen Music said the previous best-selling digital song in a single week was American rapper Flo Rida’s “Right Round” in 2009, which sold 636,000 downloads.
On the Billboard 200 album chart, Australian pop punk band 5 Seconds of Summer grabbed the No.1 spot selling 192,000 units of their new release “Sounds Good Feels Good.”
That pushed country singer Carrie Underwood into second place with her new album “Storyteller” with some 177,000 units sold. Blake Shelton, country music star and a judge on TV show “The Voice,” saw his greatest hits collection “Reloaded; 20 #1 Hits” debut in 5th place.
The Billboard 200 chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).
Canadian rapper The Weeknd held on to the No. 3 position with “Beauty Behind the Madness,” and last week’s chart toppers, Pentatonix, slipped to 8th with their self-titled album of a cappella songs.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by James Dalgleish and Andrew Hay)
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