In a sales performance that defies every assumption about the state of the music industry, it was announced today that Adele's new album 25 has sold more than 800,000 copies in its first week of release in the UK. This is the highest ever figure for the sales of any album in a week.

To underline just how astonishing is the success of the album, 25 sold more copies than the cumulative total sales of the next 86 albums in the chart. 25 is the first album ever to sell in excess of 100,000 downloads in a week.

While digital sales were impressive, topping the quarter of a million mark, it was the physical sales that were truly astonishing – a phenomenal 551,423 CDs being sold.

"The statistics surrounding the album are staggering,” the chief executing of the Official Charts Company, Martin Talbot, observed. And no one could disagree with that!

"No album has ever sold 800,000 copies to reach No.1, in the history of British music,” he added. “We can all be absolutely sure that more records will be toppled as Adele fever grips the nation in the run-up to Christmas."

The previous record for sales in a single week was held by Oasis’ album, Be Here Now, which blasted straight to No.1 with sales of 696,000 in 1997.

Meanwhile in the US, 25 has sold more than 3 million copies – an achievement which Billboard Magazine has described as “doing the seemingly impossible.” As with the UK, this is a record-breaking performance. The previous debut week sales record was held by N’Sync’s No Strings Attached, released in 2000. It sold 2.4 million copies.

he album also wet to No.1 in Ireland, but no sales figures have been announced yet.