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Adele is on course to break records for the biggest one-week album sales in UK chart history. The album, 25, which shot to No 1 in the iTunes chart in 106 out of 119 countries, sold 300,000 copies in the UK alone when it was released last Friday, one of the biggest first-day totals of all time. Only two albums have ever sold more than 500,000 copies in a week – Progress by Take That, which sold 518,601 in its debut week in November 2010, and Oasis’s Be Here Now, the all-time record holder which notched 695,761 in its first chart week in August 1997.

The success of 25 follows in the wake of the album’s first single, Hello, which went platinum and has become the UK’s fastest selling song of the year.

In isolation, these figures are impressive, but against the backdrop of massively declining album sales over the past five years, such predictions are unprecedented for an album released in 2015.

The figures secure Adele’s place, along with Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith, among the 1 percent of artistes who can reliably sell albums in big numbers, in contrast to the 99 percent lower down the charts whose sales are in freefall. While music industry experts argue that this “superstar artiste economy” has always existed to some extent, the changing trends in music platforms and consumption have widened the gap more than ever. The top 1percent of musical works now account for 77 percent of total artist revenues. — Guardian/CNN.