If you’ve been using your extra time at home lately as an excuse to build your physical music library, you’re certainly not alone: Americans bought 2.11 million vinyl records in the week ending on December 23rd, according to Billboard. This marks vinyl’s biggest week in sales since SoundScan began tracking music sales in 1991, as well as the first time vinyl sales have exceeded two million units in decades. 41,500 of those sales went to Kid Cudi, whose Man on the Moon III: The Chosen just broke the record for the biggest vinyl sales week for both a male artist and a rap album in Nielsen history.
This is the second consecutive year of LP supremacy, after 2020 was the best year in vinyl’s history, outselling CDs for the first time in 34 years. The previous weekly vinyl sales record was set during last year’s holiday rush, with 1.84 million units moved during the week ending December 24th, 2020.
The new record is a 45% increase compared to the week ending December 16th, 2021 (1.46 million), so we can assume a lot of folks were relying on records to fulfill their last-minute gift shopping needs. Cudi is certainly relishing in his success this holiday season: “This is HUGE. I wanna thank everyone who went out and copped the vinyl! This is all because of YOU! I LOVE YOU ALL,” he wrote on Instagram.
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But even above Kid Cudi, the best-selling vinyl album in the past week was Adele‘s 30, which moved 59,000 copies and topped Billboard‘s weekly Vinyl Albums chart for the fifth week in a row. Its sales now rack up to 293,000 in the US alone, which explains that global vinyl shortage that’s causing all your favorite indie bands to suffer deeply. Billie Eilish‘s Happier Than Ever had an impressive year in vinyl sales, too, having sold 73,000 vinyl copies its first week of release.
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