Vinyl just had its biggest week in US history with 1.8 million LPs sold

Vinyl is well and truly back with a bang, with the Covid-19 pandemic seemingly encouraging more people to stay at home and listen to new music on an older format.

Last week, the US sold the most amount of vinyl records in history in a single week with almost two million LPs sold across the country.

According to Billboard, 1.842 million vinyl LPs were purchased in the US in the pre-Christmas rush which ended on December 24.

It broke the record set just one week before (December 10th to 17th), where 1.445 million were sold.

The new record is the biggest weekly sales of vinyl in the country since records began in 1991. 2020 also saw vinyl outsell CDs for the first time since the 1980s.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl contributed a staggering $232 million (€189 million) to total physical sales of $376 million (€307 million) in the first half of 2020.

Both classic and contemporary artists experienced bigger record and tape sales; from Fleetwood Mac, Oasis and AC/DC to Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga.

Among the most popular vinyl records sold over the past 12 months are the classic Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis. AC/DC’s new record Power Up, Ultra Mono by IDLES, and Harry Styles’s Fine Line also did well, with Arctic Monkeys managing to have one of the top-selling vinyl albums of the year, despite only releasing their Live at the Royal Albert Hall LP in December.

Currently, Dermot Kennedy's Without Fear sits atop of the Official Irish Vinyl Albums Charts, beating Bruce Springsteen's Letter To You, Andrea Boticelli's Believe, Christy Moore's The Early Years: 1969-81 and Taylor Swift's evermore to the top spot.

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