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07.12.12 Music Week 3
RECORD-BREAKING ALBUM EIGHTH BIGGEST 21ST CENTURY RELEASE IN UNITED STATES
Adele’s 21 continues to make history A
SALES BY PAUL WILLIAMS
dele faces now only a rival in Norah Jones for the world’s biggest-
selling studio album this century after 21 sold its 25 millionth copy. Although worldwide sales
figures are notoriously difficult to pinpoint exactly, especially with older albums, it appears the 25 million retail landmark surpassed by the XL album at the end of last month means only Jones’ 2002 debut Come Away With Me can challenge it for global supremacy since the millennium. Before its Universal takeover,
EMI reported in February this year that Come Away With Me had also shifted 25 million copies globally, although in some places its total sales are recorded at 26 million. However, what is clear is that 21 has sold at a quicker rate than Jones’ album did at its height and it is only a matter of time before its sales superiority can be put beyond doubt. More than a year after its
release in May 2003, Come Away With Me was revealed by EMI to have sold 13 million copies worldwide. By comparison, at the end of 2011, around 11 months after its UK
Chasing records: Adele approaches Norah Jones’s sales total – while 21 is also one of the fastest albums of the last 20 years to get to 10 million sales, behind ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys (above)
release and 10 months after coming out in North America, 21 had reached more than 15 million sales, according to IFPI figures. Likewise, in the US Jones’
TOP-SELLING 21st CENTURY ALBUMS IN US ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL
THE BEATLES 1 Apple/Capitol N SYNC No Strings Attached Jive
NORAH JONES Come Away With Me Blue Note EMINEM The Marshall Mathers LP Aftermath/Interscope EMINEM The Eminem ShowAftermath/Interscope USHER Confessions LaFace
LINKIN PARK Hybrid Theory Warner Bros ADELE 21 XL
Universal’s Globe staffs up
Universal Music UK’s new-look sync, brand partnership and TV production team has confirmed some key appointments. Maria Murtagh has joined
Globe as creative director after two years as a product manager at Island Records where she worked with artists including Amy Winehouse, Nicki Minaj, Bombay Bicycle Club and Psy. Murtagh moved into music marketing after being a director of Ian Monk Associates and stints at Borkowski and Jackie Cooper PR. Joining forces with Murtagh
will be Tom Stingemore who is also being promoted to a creative director at Globe after six years
in the sync team as creative services manager. Marc Robinson (pictured),
MD of Globe, Creative and Commercial, said: “Having someone with Maria’s mixture of brand, PR and frontline label experience working across the whole department is going to be invaluable to the team. “Since joining Universal Music
at the start of 2007, with a background as a promoter and DJ, Tom has been a huge asset to the team, dividing his time across many areas of the business, assisting in securing high-profile syncs and building relationships with ad agencies, music supervisors and production companies.”
Elsewhere in the sync team,
head of creative licensing Paul Veitch steps up to become director of creative licensing. And Jackie Joseph joins Globe from Decca as director of Legal & Business Affairs. Added Robinson: “Our plan is to integrate even more with
[Universal’s] labels. I’m excited to see what magic Globe’s new creative directors can weave. “Following last month’s arrival
of Jennifer Hills as senior director of Commercial Partnerships and promotion of Sarah Desmond to a parallel role, these are the final pieces of the
YEAR 2000
2000 2002 2000 2002 2004 2000 2011
ALBUM SALES 12.1m 11.1m
The table shows albums released this century which have sold more than 10 million copies in the US Source: Nielsen Soundscan
10.9m 10.6m 10.1m 10.0m 10.0m 10.0m
debut took around three years after release to be recognised for 10 million sales, while Adele’s album surpassed the same landmark a week ago in its 92nd week of release. According to Nielsen SoundScan, it was the quickest dash to 10 million copies since ‘N Sync’s No Strings Attached managed it after 43 weeks in January 2001, while in the SoundScan era starting in 1991 only one other album has got there faster – Backstreet Boys’ Millennium after 39 weeks in February 2000. The global sales of 21 would be impressive at any time but are
made more remarkable in that they have happened at a time when an album reaching 10 million global sales is extremely rare, let alone one selling 20 or 25 million copies. In the States, the last album released before 21 to get to 10 million sales was Usher’s Confessions, which came out in 2004 but did not reach the benchmark until July this year. In all, only eight albums
released this century have sold more than 10 million copies in the US and just two of them are by UK acts: 21 by Adele and The Beatles retrospective 1, the post- millennium top seller overall with 12.1 million units shifted Stateside and more than 30 million globally. Given the difficulty of
precisely calculating global album numbers – sales, for example, offered for the overall top seller Thriller by Michael Jackson vary as widely as 65 million and 110 million – it is impossible to say where 21 ranks exactly on an all-time chart. However, it is safe to say it now keeps the company of such albums as AC/DC’s Back In Black and The Bodyguard soundtrack, while only around a dozen releases by other UK acts have outsold it, among them Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon.
“Our plan is to integrate even more with [Universal’s] labels. I’m excited to see what magic Globe’s new creative directors can weave” MARC ROBINSON (left), GLOBE
Maria Murtagh Tom Stingemore
jigsaw – I now feel we are fully equipped to deliver our vision of a creative one-stop shop for brands, agencies and media companies alike.”
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