Final 12 months, considered one of each 25 vinyl LPs bought in the US was a Taylor Swift album, Billboard experiences, citing Luminate’s year-end music roundup. Pushed by the bonanza launch of Midnights, which inspired followers to purchase a number of copies with completely different sleeves, Swift’s 1.7 million LP gross sales made her the runaway top-seller within the vinyl market. Primarily based on complete album-equivalent consumption, nevertheless, Unhealthy Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti was 2022’s greatest album in the US. It pulled forward with huge streaming numbers: 4.3 billion audio streams to Midnights’ 1.8 billion.
Swift’s launch technique, which additionally included a number of coloured vinyl choices, renewed debate round main label artists’ capitalization on the vinyl revival, which critics say clogs urgent vegetation and delays smaller releases. As Billboard famous forward of the album’s No. 1 chart debut, Swift’s midweek gross sales of 500,000 LPs represented “greater than most artists can now manufacture, not to mention promote.”
Midnights bucked the pattern for pop gross sales to skew digital: 62 % of its first-week gross sales have been by way of LPs and CDs. By shifting 1.58 million equal albums throughout codecs in seven days, it marked the largest launch week since Adele’s 25 in 2015. “Anti-Hero” was additionally the 12 months’s top-selling digital track, greater than doubling gross sales of second-place Lizzo’s “About Rattling Time.” Kate Bush’s Stranger Issues–fuelled “Operating Up That Hill” resurgence landed the track at No. 5 on the 12 months’s digital gross sales chart. The highest track throughout on-demand audio and video streaming was launched in 2021: Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow’s “Business Child.”
Midnights, in fact, was the 12 months’s biggest-selling vinyl, with 945,000 gross sales. However Swift’s 2020 LP Folklore additionally drove enormous numbers: Its 174,000 gross sales made it the seventh best-seller of the 12 months. Pop albums additionally took the No. 2 and three spots, by Harry Kinds and Olivia Rodrigo, respectively. Kendrick Lamar’s Good Child, M.A.A.D Metropolis was at No. 4, and Tyler, the Creator charted with each Name Me If You Get Misplaced and Igor, within the 6 and eight spots, respectively. Gen Z listeners, Luminate notes, spend, on common, 18 % extra money on music than the typical U.S. music listener, and helped drive the 12 months’s monumental vinyl gross sales.
Learn “Why Are Unbiased Artists and Labels Turning Away From Vinyl?” on the Pitch.
