Adele '25' Won't Stream, May Break NSYNC's First Week Sales Record

The New York Times reports that Adele's team is withholding streaming on all major and minor platforms. Adele was reportedly instrumental in making that decision.

The fact that Adele is not streaming 25 should come as no surprise to her fans; her last album 21 was not on services such as Spotify until a year after its release. That mode seemed to work for Adele. 21 sold 1.1 million copies in its first week in 2010 and went on to move over 10 million copies in the U.S.

Though, now the Billboard 200 includes streaming data in its metrics, so how will this affect Adele's first week album sales? According to Billboard, the answer is not by much. 25 has already been rumored to move over 2 million copies in its first week, and now it seems as though she may have the best weekly sales in Nielsen's tracking history.

Adele's American distributor, Columbia, will ship 3.6 million physical units of 25 to retailers on Nov. 20. Adele, who has always been a solid physical seller, is expected to move 1.5 million hard copies of 25 in her first week. She is also expected to sell an addition 900,000 copies on iTunes and 100,000 copies via other digital retailers. That means she is projected for first week sales of 2.5 million copies, which will set a new record for fastest sales.

The record? *NSYNC's No Strings Attached, which sold 2.4 million copies in 2001. And, we don't have to tell you that the record industry was very different 14 years ago.

25 will be released on Nov. 20. The LP is being led by single "Hello."

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Adele