Record Store Day continues to drive vinyl sales, with albums up 213% in the US

547,000 albums sold on vinyl in a week.

Nielsen Music has released data via Billboard from this year’s 10th anniversary Record Store Day event, which shows the annual celebration going from strength to strength.

For the week of Record Store Day (ending 27th April), album sales at independent shops jumped 197% compared to the previous week, which is the largest weekly gain since Record Store Day began. And if you’re talking vinyl album sales, the numbers are even higher, up 484% with a staggering 409,000 albums on vinyl that week.

Take into account non-indie retailers and the figures are even higher, with a 213% increase in album sales on the previous week, with 547,000 sold – the biggest non-Christmas period week since Nielsen began in 1991.

Following last week’s news that David Bowie dominated the UK’s Record Store Day charts, the US painted a slightly broader picture, although catalogue releases and rock still took precedence. Grateful Dead’s P.N.E. Garden Auditorium…, The Doors’ Live at the Matrix and The Black Angels’ Deathsong were this year’s top three.

Compared to Record Store Day 2016, this year’s event saw a 1.4% growth, with independent record shops now representing 31% of all physical album sales, which is the sector’s highest ever weekly share.

Incredibly, Nielsen reports that sales of 12″s jumped 4,350% to 89,000 for the week, from a measly 2,000 the previous week. This gives a somewhat skewed picture of the sales of dance music, which we suspect may not be so widely reported (or reflect the type of shops included in the report) on a normal week.