According to Billboard, Adele's US record label, Columbia Records, will 'ship' 3.6m copies of '25', the highest figure since *NSYNC's 'No Strings Attached', and that was in 2000 when people actually bought CDs.
That basically means they're making a shit tonne of CD versions of the album in preparation for Friday's release date. 'Insiders' have told Billboard that first week sales projections for '25' in America currently stand at around 2.5m (1.5m CDs and around 900,000 downloads), which if reached would be the highest debut since 'No Strings Attached' (that 'shifted' 2.415m).
It's still not been confirmed if the album will arrive at streaming sites on Friday, or if there will be some sort of staggered release, or if they'll stream the album at all.
We live in exciting times.