Adele bucks the streaming trend by selling most music on CDs

Adele’s no-streaming strategy may have worked better than was at first thought.<br />The British singer, who kept her best-selling album, “25,” off streaming services when it was first released Nov. 13, managed to shift a stunning 67 percent of her 7.44 million album sales in 2015 to the physical CD, according to Nielsen Music.<br />That’s nearly 5 million CD sales.<br />The rest were digital downloads.<br />In an era when CD sales are plummeting, Adele’s performance was outstanding.<br />In 2014, only two albums sold 1 million physical copies.<br />Adele’s tremendous sales helped the US music industry see total album sales — physical plus downloads but not including track equivalents — rise 15.2 percent, to 549.4 million units.