Adele breaks record with song downloads

British pop star Adele on Monday shattered a record with her long-awaited song Hello, which became the first track downloaded more than 1 million times in a week in the United States.

Hello, a piano ballad that is the debut single from Adele's first album in nearly five years, opened at number one for the week through Thursday on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, which monitors sales, streaming and radio play.

For digital sales only, Hello was downloaded 1.1 million times, far outpacing the previous record holder, rapper Flo Rida's New Wave-sampling Right Round which sold 636,000 copies in a week in early 2009, tracking service Nielsen Music says.