Adele’s ’25’ to set a new UK record tonight?

After setting new chart records in the United States and Canada – and picking up its third platinum in Australia in five days for sales of 210,000 – Adele’s 25 could achieve a new chart milestone in the United Kingdom tonight.

After shifting the goal posts for first day sales with 3000,000 last Friday, the UK music industry was eagerly looking to see how it would fare through this week.

Martin Talbot, CEO of the Official Charts Company, which collates the UK chart, said at the time, “Adele truly is a once in a generation artist. Her appeal spans age groups and genres, from children to teenagers, right through to mums and dads, uncles and aunties.

“With this mammoth first day sales tally, Adele has taken a further step towards greatness. Over the next few days we will find out whether it can pass the magic half a million sales mark.”

But by Tuesday (November 24), 25 had streaked past the 518,601 mark of Take That’s Progress in 2010 and rung up 538,000 units. It is now the second fastest selling album of all time in the UK. She has just one long player to beat, Oasis’ Be Here Now which had 696,000 customers in its first week in August 1997.

The Official Charts Company reckons that it’s “well on its way” to claiming the new record. 25 made up 42% of total UK music sales this week.

The charts are published late tonight UK time. The figures are made up of CD, vinyl, digital downloads and streams from over 6500 retailers. Already she is heavily rumoured to be one of the headlining acts at next year’s Glastonbury festival, along with Coldplay, Muse, The Stone Roses and Rihanna.

Adele’s second album 21 sold 208,000 copies in the UK first week in January 2011. The debut 19 sold 73,000 copies in its debut week in February 2008.

In the US, 25 already achieved a new high for first week sales when it moved 2.8 million units – and will most likely hit 2.9 million or 3 million by the end of the week. The official sales will be announced late Sunday US time.

As reported in TMN earlier, it easily passed the previous record set by *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached (March 2000) with 2.4 million. NSYNC said they were disappointed they were toppled but sent their hearty congratulations, saying “Adele is the truth”. On social media they posted: We officially say Bye Bye Bye as @Adele says Hello to the World Record of Most Albums Sold In a Single Week. Congratulations.”

In the US, 25 already achieved another milestone by moving 1.45 million digital albums. 900,000 of these were on the first day. The previous digital first week triumph was set by Lady Gaga’s Born This Way (May 2011) with 662,000 digital copies.

25 is expected to debut at the top of the Billboard Top 200. It seems that 21 – which sold 11.2 million in America and spent 24 non-consecutive 24 weeks at #1 – could also re-enter the Top 10.

In Canada, 25 set a new sales record with 261,000 units in just over four days.

With all these triumphant sales figures, imagine what she will earn by next year. Figures released this week showed that in 2014 – when she released no new music or played a concert – her Melted Stone company made over £17 million (A$35.49 million) just from the royalties of her first two albums. That is £46,000 ($63,470) a day. (The average UK salary is £25 million).

What is mind-boggling is that these figures do not include monies from her publishing division, Melted Stone Publishing, which are not available.

Her personal fortune before the release of 25 was £50 million ($104.37 million), which makes her one of the richest Britons aged under 30.