Adele's 21 has made history again by becoming the first album in the Nielsen SoundScan era to finish as the top annual seller for two successive years.

Newly-released SoundScan figures show 21 sold an unmatched 4.41 million copies last year, having shifted 5.82 million units in 2011 when it also finished as the year's top seller. For the year just gone it finished around 1.3 million sales ahead of its nearest rival, Taylor Swift's Red, which sold 3.1 million copies by ...