Here are the facts from Adele’s new album 25 after just its first week of sales.

– UK – sold 800,000 copies.

– USA – sold 3.38 million copies.

Now lets add some meat to those figures. In the USA, 25 is the first album to ever have broken the 3 million mark in a week. It is also the biggest selling album in 2015 in the USA, with Taylor Swift’s 1989 selling just 1.8 million albums.

In the UK, the figure of 800,000 is more than the next 86 albums sales combined.

What is so significant of these statistics? Prior to release Adele announced that her new album would not be available on any subscription services, meaning you would have to buy it if you wanted to listen to it. People on monthly subscription services aired their discontent on social media but actually it probably fuelled the fire to engage people to go out and buy the album. Heck, there was even queues at HMV.

But what does this stance mean for future album releases and subscription services? It shows a weakness in the subscription model. The subscription model does not pay artists a fair share versus the potential earnings they might make from an album sale. Just think, there is no way Adele would have earned as much if she had allowed her new album to be available on subscription music services.

Do you think it was fair of Adele to ban 25 from being available from music subscription services?