Vinyl Sales Had Their Best Week in 30 Years

Vinyl sales just had an historic peak.

According to Billboard, last week was the best sales week ever since 1991, which is the year that Luminate, formerly known as Soundscan, started counting music sales electronically. The company says that this week, customers in the United States bought more than 2-million records in the week ending December 22.

Ahead of the holiday, vinyl sales shot up nearly 50 percent from the week prior. That week saw Taylor Swift’s Midnights sell more than 68.000 vinyl units.

For 2022, vinyl sales in America were nearly 50 million, up more than three-and-a-half percent from last year.

Interestingly, 2021 was the first year in decades that vinyl records outsold CDs in the United States. This year, vinyl sales were larger than CD sales in the U.K. for the first time in three-and-a-half decades.

While streaming numbers draws physical sales, vinyl albums, CDs, and even tapes remain an important part of the business—especially around the gift-giving season.

In 2020, vinyl sales were already beginning to eclipse CDs, too.