This year’s Record Store Day was a big hit amongst music fans and vinyl collectors around the country. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise though, as what kind of vinyl collector wouldn’t get excited about exclusive RSD releases from bands like the Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Bob Dylan, and many more?
Related: Crosley Radio Partners With Record Store Day For Mini Turntable That Plays Three-Inch Vinyl
This year’s Record Store Day was such a success in fact, that the sales figures from physical units sold at retail locations around the country broke records set in previous years.
According to Nielsen Music, the 12th edition of the annual music holiday resulted in the industry-wide sales of 827,000 vinyl albums sold in the United States for in the week ending on April 18th, with 673,000 of those albums sold on-site at independent record stores. If those numbers weren’t impressive enough, Record Store Day also played a role in resulting in the third-largest sales week for vinyl since Nielsen Music started tracking the sale of physical recorded music back in 1991. And who said the music industry was dying?
This year’s Record Store Day also helped to break the vinyl sales record set last year when a total of 733,000 physical units were sold throughout the week—a 12.8% increase in total.
Amazingly, The top-selling Record Store Day-exclusive release this year happened to be from the Grateful Dead, thanks to the release their archival Warfield: San Francisco, California, October 9th, 1980 / October 10th, 1980 live album. Not bad for a band which never made many headlines based on album sales and hasn’t even been around since Jerry Garcia died in 1995.
The top-selling Record Store Day-exclusive single at indie record stores was The Rolling Stones‘ “She’s A Rainbow”. Rock seemed to be the dominating force during this year’s Record Store Day, as bands including Green Day, Greta Van Fleet, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Pearl Jam, and Weezer were the other top-selling artists whose exclusive releases led the charge in total sales numbers.
[H/T Billboard]
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