Adele’s album 30 has biggest UK opening in four years – and hits 55 million weekly song streams | News about Ant-Man & Art

Adele’s album had its most successful UK debut in four years, with first-week sales of 261,000 and 55.7 million plays across 12 tracks.

Ed Sheeran’s Share, in 2017, was the last album to top Adele’s opening list for her much-anticipated record, age 30.

It’s also the biggest opening for a female solo artist since her last album in 2015.

As well as 55 million individual song streams this week, 67% of album sales were physical albums – 16,700 of which were vinyl.

Adele also dominated the singles chart, with Easy On Me at number one for its sixth week following another 101,000 sales and 11.5 million streams.

That beats her previous record at the top of the table for five weeks for Someone Like You.

She also went straight to second and fourth with Oh My God and I Drink Wine, according to the Official Charts Company.

The rest of the album chart includes Ed Sheeran’s Equals at number two, Abba’s at number three, Oasis’s Knebworth live recording at number four, and Robert Plant’s Raise the Roof and Alison Krauss is another new release in its fifth year.

Sheeran was also the only one to stop Adele from reaching the top five in the singles chart – with Shivers at number three and Bad Habits at number five.

Adele’s tens of millions of weekly streams made her influential this week with forcing streaming giant Spotify to make changes.

It stopped automatically mixing albums after Adele said it was the “unique request” she had in the “always changing” music industry.

She posted that artists don’t “create albums with a lot of care and thought about our playlists for no reason”.

The streaming service announced its consent by tweeting: “Anything for you.”

Adele added: “Our art tells a story and our stories should be heard as we intended. Thanks Spotify for listening.”