ADELE'S PREORDER BONANZA

With a little more than one week until street, Adele’s 25 (XL/Columbia) continues to rack up huge preorder numbers. Across all retailers, 25 is approaching 500k in orders. Of course, the bulk of this—over 80%—is digital, since most physical retailers don’t offer a preorder option. (But those that do are seeing serious action: At Amazon, 25 is nearing the record 88k set by Susan Boyle’s debut SYCO/Columbia release.)

Only two weeks ago, Adele became the first artist to sell over 1m downloads of a single track with “Hello.” Will she become the first artist to sell 1m digital albums in a single week? With current forecasts at 2-2.5m for the album overall, it’s very likely she will.