When you preorder an album on iTunes, you're "instantly gratified" the singles that are available in advance (in this case, it's "Hello"). As a "consequence," this will count toward an album sale and not toward the single sales.
Ah, okay.
But how does a single song counting toward a whole album work?
1 "instant grat" single = 1 album sale?
I'm not a stan of her as such, but I do think she is extremely talented and Hello is a great comeback single.
I just love the fact she's come back with so little promotion and gimmicks and yet she's absolutely demolishing every record under the sun. Basically The Beatles of our time, come through current and future legend.
It's basically buying the album even BEFORE the first week, which is the same as buying it first week.