After nearly two years in a gridlocked pandemic, this year in music was all about paying homage to nostalgic acts. Pop icon Britney Spears made her triumphant return to music, as did Backstreet Boys. While rock band Blink-182 plans to make their return next year, No Doubt plans to do the same. Musicians weren’t the only ones feeling the throwback energy in the air. According to Billboard, consumers of music felt the same opting for vinyl album purchases in mass this year.
Data and insight company, Luminate, revealed that last week (ending on December 15) was the third-largest week for vinyl sales since 1991 — well that’s when the company began tracking the metrics. Of the albums released on vinyl this year, the company reported, A Charlie Brown Christmas, sold a total of 469,000 pieces of vinyl. Overall, this year’s official vinyl album sales total $39.659 million dollars (or 1.521 million units), a 3.5% increase since last year.
This is quite normal for the 1965 animated TV special, as the document outlines, A Charlie Brown Christmas is consistently among the top-selling holiday album on vinyl annually domestically. Other albums at the top album sales chart include Taylor Swift’s Midnights which currently sits at No. 1 for the eighth consecutive week (a record previously held by Adele’s 30) and Zach Bryan’s American Heartbreak at No. 4.
But not all old music technology is being embraced. CD albums sale fell for the second consecutive year. The data should CD album sales only accounted for $33.822 million, which is down 11.3% compared to a year ago.