After all that anticipation, all that fear of underwhelming, it’s been a walk in the park.
More than three years since Adele‘s last single was released, her new track, Hello, looks on course to become a record-breaker.
Hello, produced by Greg Kurstin, was officially released on download and streaming sites on Friday (October 23).
In less than 72 hours since it arrived online, it’s making a huge splash on leading digital services.
MBW rounds up some of the biggest achievements of the track below…
YouTube/Vevo
The official video for Hello surpassed 50m views on Sunday (October 25) at around 11am GMT – 54 hours after it was released on Friday.
Do the maths: 50m views in 54 hours means Hello ran very close to a million views an hour in this time-frame.
As of 8am GMT this morning (October 26), 72 hours after it was released, the official Hello video has hit more than 67m views on YouTube/Vevo.
At this rate, Hello is in contention to hit 100m streams on YouTube in its first seven days.
That would put it in the Top 5 list of the fastest-ever videos to reach the milestone, only behind Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball and Psy’s Gentlemen.
Some of the big-name videos it would beat: Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off (27 days), Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda (11 days) and Shakira ft Rihanna’s Can’t Remember To Forget You (10 days).
Fastest EVER videos to reach 100m on YouTube:
- Psy, Gentleman (2013) – 3 days
- Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball (2013) – 6 days
- Kobe vs. Messi, The Selfie Shootout (ad) (2013) – 8 days
- Shakira, Can’t Remember To Forget You (2014) – 10 days
- Nicki Minaj, Anaconda (2014) – 11 days
- Taylor Swift, Blank Space (2014) – 16 days
- Wiz Khalifa, See You Again (2015) – 17 days
- Shakira, La La La (2014) – 20 days
- Maroon 5, Sugar (2015) – 20 days
- Kobe Bryant vs. Lionel Messi on Turkish Airlines ad (2012) – 21 days
- Katy Perry, Dark Horse (2014) – 23 days
- Katy Perry, Roar (2013) – 26 days
- Taylor Swift, Shake It Off (2014) – 27 days
- Sia, Elastic Heart (2015) – 27 days
- Pitbull, We Are One (Ole Ola) (2014) – 30 days
[Update: Hello officially surpassed 23.2 million views within its first 24 hours on YouTube – giving it the biggest day-one performance for a music video in history.]
To put this storming performance in context, Hello has some way to go to catch Adele’s biggest singles on YouTube.
The official video for Someone Like You has 543m views, and it’s a similar story for Rolling In The Deep (721m).
However, Hello has the streaming count of Skyfall (121m) very much in its sights.
iTunes
At this stage, it’s easier to ask which iTunes singles charts Adele’s Hello isn’t currently topping.
It’s No.1 in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and No.10 in Japan.
It’s also No.1 right across Europe, including France and Italy, as well as Russia and Canada.
[UPDATE: MBW understands that Hello has hit No.1 in no less than 102 countries. Why that’s mad: iTunes is available in approximately 120 countries.]
Likewise, pre-orders for Adele’s new album 25 – due for release on November 20 – have turned it into a chart-topper across the world.
25 is the iTunes No.1 album in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and Japan.
It’s the same story, well, pretty much everywhere: our calculations tell us it’s already topped the iTunes chart in 93 territories.
Perhaps less expected is the knock-on effect this resurgent Adele mania has had on her previous album, 21 (pictured).
That LP has gone Top 10 on iTunes in the US (currently No.7), the UK (No.5), Brazil (No.4), Canada (No.9), New Zealand (No.5), Russia (No.5), Czech Republic (No.10), Denmark (No.10) and South Africa (No.5).
As for Hello, it’s on course to break records in the US download market.
Billboard reports that the track sold 450,000 copies during its first 48 hours on sale.
That looks probable to surpass the biggest week one of any digital track in US history – a crown which currently belongs to Flo Rida’s Right Round with 636,000 sales.
Over in the UK, MBW is being told that Hello sold close to 120,000 in its first two days on sale.
Spotify
Yes, Adele – at one stage the world’s most famous Spotify hold-out – has elected to put Hello on Daniel Ek‘s streaming service from day one. And it appears to be paying off.
In its opening three days on Spotify, the song has been streamed on the verge of 9m times on the service, generating around $63,000.
[Update: After four days, as of 27/10, the Spotify streaming number has jumped up to 17.4m.]
So… is it a Spotify record-breaker? In a word, no.
The previous week-one record for Spotify was set by Justin Bieber’s What Do You Mean?, which was streamed 21m times in just five days.
Unless something drastic changes, Hello won’t get near that figure.
It’s worth noting that Justin Bieber, like previous Spotify record holders One Direction, actively pushed his fans to the platform repeatedly during the promotion of his comeback track.
Adele hasn’t followed this strategy, which perhaps explains why her fans have streamed Hello over five times as much on YouTube as they have Spotify.Music Business Worldwide
