Vinyl hits another high in its comeback

After 15 years of year-over-year growth, there are still people who believe that our interest in vinyl is a fad. Here’s another stat that shoots down that theory.

For the week ending December 22, more vinyl was sold in the US since proper sales tracking was brought in back in 1991 with the introduction of SoundScan. A total of 2.232 million units were sold, beating last year’s high of 2.115 million. To put this into perspective, the last time this much vinyl was sold, albums like Nirvana’s Nevermind, Ten from Pearl Jam, the RHCP’s Blood Sugar Sex Magick, and U2’s Achtung Baby were all brand new in the stores.

As in the UK, that week’s vinyl sales was led by Taylor Swift and Midnights, moving 68,000 units. (It helped that many Swifties bought all four coloured vinyl variants and maybe even a fifth that was available only at Target.)

In America, year-to-date vinyl album sales sit at 41.891 million, up 3.6% from 2021.

Canadian figures will be available shortly.