Adele smashes single-week U.S. album sales record in four days

NEW YORK (Reuters) - British singer Adele has broken the single-week U.S. album sales record in just four days with her new release "25," Nielsen Music said on Tuesday. Total sales for the album, released on Friday, have surpassed 2.43 million copies, smashing a 15-year-old record set by boy band NSync's 2000 album "No Strings Attached," Nielsen said. The NSync album sold 2.41 million copies in its first week. The huge Adele sales figures come at a time when artists rarely top 1 million in opening week sales because of the rise of online streaming of music. Taylor Swift's "1989" album was the last record to achieve the milestone when it opened last year with nearly 1.3 million copies for the week. Like Swift, Adele and her independent record company XL Recordings decided to withhold "25" from streaming platforms such as Apple Inc's Apple Music service, privately owned Spotify and Google Play. "25" is Adele's first album since her 2011 release "21," which won six Grammy awards and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. The first single, "Hello," which debuted last month has sold more than 2.5 million digital copies and has been on top of Billboard's Digital Songs chart for four consecutive weeks. "25" sales data for the first full week will be released by Nielsen on Nov. 30. (Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Alan Crosby)