Life & Style

Adele retains top spot for third consecutive week

Singer outpaces Coldplay and Justin Bieber on ‘Billboard 200’ as ‘25’ sales soar to 5.19m

Reuters December 15, 2015

Adele on Monday announced her first North American tour in five years. PHOTO: REUTERS

NEW YORK: Adele’s record-breaking new album 25 sold another 728,000 copies last week, easily trumping Coldplay’s new release, A Head Full of Dreams, to retain the top spot on the Billboard 200 album charts for a third consecutive week.

Coldplay, like Adele, initially held back their album from streaming service Spotify and other free platforms, selling some 209,000 copies in their debut week, according to data from Nielsen Music on Monday.

The British rock band, who are to play the coveted halftime show at the 2016 Super Bowl in February, said last week they would stream A Head Full of Dreams on Spotify in its second week of release.

Adele's '25' adds another million sales in second record-breaking week

Adele’s 25, already the biggest-selling album in the US for 2015, has sold some 5.19 million copies since its November 20 release. The singer on Monday announced her first North American tour in five years. She will play 56 dates starting in July in St Paul, Minnesota and end on November 15 in Mexico City. Her United Kingdom and European tour is already sold out.

The strong showing by Adele and Coldplay pushed Justin Bieber’s Purpose into third place on the Billboard 200, with about 150,000 copies sold for the week. A cappella group Pentatonix slipped to fourth place with That’s Christmas To Me.

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).

Adele's '25' becomes UK's biggest-selling No1 album

New entries by rappers G-Eazy (When It’s Dark Out) and Rick Ross (Black Market) landed at number five and six, respectively. South African-born Australian actor and singer Troye Sivan, 20, took seventh place with his album Blue Neighborhood.

On the Digital Songs chart, which measures online download sales, Adele’s single Hello was ousted from the number one spot by Jordan Smith, a finalist on TV competition show The Voice, whose rendition of the Queen classic Somebody to Love sold more than 164,000 copies compared with 158,000 for Hello.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2015.

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