Adele had the biggest debut in 2021, but her new album sales sold significantly less than in 2015.
The new album sold 838,000 copies in its first week, most of them downloads and CD’s and had the biggest first sales week in 2021.
The previous album “25” sold 3.8 million copies in its first week and went on to sell 18 million copies over 12 months. Adele spent the year on a tight schedule of TV appearances, award shows, radio visits, and a worldwide tour. If Adele were to follow the same exact blue print, it wouldn’t have the same effect because these promotional runs don’t penetrate like they once did. Today, you want TikTokers covering the song, hoping it goes viral, but even TikTok has peaked.
Some critics claim Adele waited too long between album cycles and that 6 years will cost you relevance. The album should had more hooks and artist features. Maybe Adele can recruit Rapper DaBaby for a new version of Easy On Me. Surely, that will drive sales. None of this matters and wouldn’t change the outcome. You can’t reassemble a hit, nor the year 2015.
Adele released her 4th album. Most artists don’t make it past the second album. Media has changed the music industry and there’s no looking back.
Adele said that she and Drake are “a dying breed” within the music industry. That’s probably true. Adele built her music capital assets in 2008, seconds before the explosion of social media. Adele’s name was bolstered when she performed on SNL, the same night Governor Sarah Palin who also appeared on the TV show which became the most watched episode in history. In Adele’s words, it was ‘pure luck’.
“We are a dying breed,” Adele said. “There was like 10 of us. You know, I don’t think there’ll ever be that many of us again at the top doing it the way we were doing it.
The battle for customer mindshare has become a grueling task and 2008 was a simpler time and the world was more unified. Politicians and influencers have infiltrated platforms that were once occupied by artists like Myspace. Everything changed in 2009. Adele slid through the cracks, moments before politics would dominate the discussion and social media would create distraction.
Adele’s friend posted her demo on Myspace, where it led to a phone call from Richard Russell, boss of the music label XL Recordings. It was more easy to stand out. Today, Spotify has more than 70 million tracks with more than 60,000 uploaded to the service every day.
Adele says: “We came out before streaming. We came out before all the social media frenzies of like, ‘You’ve got five seconds to entertain; otherwise, get out’. We existed in the old school-ness of the industry that we grew up watching and aspiring to [be part of].”
Whatever Adele asks, Adele receives.
Spotify has removed the shuffle button as a default option, forcing songs to be played in the order the artist intended, after Adele made the request.
“This was the only request I had in our ever changing industry!” Adele tweeted. “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended.”
Now artists have to listen to the tracks in order.
It’s been 5 years since Adele released an album and the world has changed.
Adele created her capital in the pre-streaming era. Social media was barely a thing. The UK singer was known for selling large amounts of CD’s and downloads. Adele’s ’25’ sold more copies than any other album in 2016.
Will Adele have the same impact? That’s the unknown keeping execs awake at night. We’ve entered into a different atmosphere where TikTok dominates with a distracted public.
To keep the public engaged, the execs need to sell Adele around the clock. They’ll have to sell the data to tell the Adele story- “Adele opens up with biggest streaming numbers of 2021”. “The first female artist to…”
The world has changed and there is a whole generation that never heard of Adele. Rap is the dominant genre, TikTok has dominated the music space, and… politics.
“It’s easier for her to look like a failure,” says Mark Mulligan, music-industry analyst at Midia Research.
I’m not sure what failure would look like today. If it’s dropping out of Spotify’s top 10 within a week or so, the label will make sure that doesn’t happen. Maybe failure today is not reaching world domination status which Olivia Rodrigo has right now. If that’s the benchmark of success, Adele may come up short.
While Adele generated massive amount of talk in the 2010’s, that environment doesn’t exist today. As popular as Olivia Rodrigo is now, she hasn’t generated the same mindshare as Adele at her peak.
Adele is known for her big sappy ballads. A teen today twerking to WAP on TikTok is conditioned for a two minute beat, not a 3 minute piano ballad.
Although top 40 radio likes uptempo tunes, they’ll play Adele. She has brand power and radio won’t resist her despite what some critics say.
Adele could create a much needed change to the music landscape. A fresh of breath air that will inspire a new crop of artists.
Adele is the once in a generation artist. She’s a phenomena that rarely happens and most likely won’t happen again.
She is also an artist with lots of luck. Remember, Adele credits Sarah Palin’s appearance on SNL for her early success. She blew up during the time when Amy Winehouse died. When Winehouse left the earth, Adele filled the void. While Winehouse sang in dirty jazz clubs, Adele bears her soul in a classy cocktail lounge. Close enough.
There isn’t another artist that could disappear for 5 years, go dark on socials, and come back with hundreds of thousands of fans waiting to hear her new single. Oh, and her fans? Doctors, lawyers, VP’s of companies..you know, the people with a lot of money to spend.
Adele is a big money maker for the label and to assure her success, the suits won’t take any chances. They’ve lined up the hit makers to write smashes such as Swedish geniuses Max Martin, Shellback, and Ludwig Göransson. Max Martin has more #1 hits than The Beatles.
The label is rolling out a big dollar campaign. She’s on the cover of Vogue US and UK. She’ll be plastered on subways, buses, and towers.
Adele’s biggest asset? Her voice. She underwent surgery in to stop a vocal-cord hemorrhage.
Her second biggest asset? Writing soul bearing retro tunes. The UK singer usually drops an album, not in the best of times, but the worse of times. She went through a divorce and her father died of cancer in May. It was a year of anxiety.
Adele is an artist’s artist. She possesses some strange brilliance that others would yearn for.
“I’m not having these people I don’t know take my legacy, my story away from me, and decide what I can leave behind or what I can take with me.” – Adele
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