Vinyl just had its best sales week in history in the US. As Billboard reports, there were 1.842 million LPs sold in the US during the week ending on Christmas Eve, which marks the biggest week the format has had since Nielsen/MRC Data began tracking music sales in 1991. The previous record was achieved just the week prior, with 1.445 million units sold between December 10th and December 17th.
Independent record stores also broke a new record of their own with 733,000 vinyl sales. The week’s biggest selling vinyl album was Paul McCartney’s McCartney III, which was released on December 18 and sold 32,000 units, making it the third-largest sales week for a vinyl record since 1991. The previous week’s top seller was Taylor Swift’s folklore, which sold 23,000 copies following a promotional boost from the artist’s webstore.
According to Billboard, vinyl sales also outpaced the week’s CD sales — only the fourth time that’s happened since 1991, and all four of them happened since September of this year. Experts had made that prediction last year after vinyl saw its 12th year of steady growth, reaching 18.84 million US vinyl sales compared to less than a million in 2007.