Taylor Swift midnights
Credit: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

Taylor Swift Vinyl Sales Help Push the Format Ahead of CDs in 2022

Taylor Swift’s tenth album, Midnights, has been setting fire to the record books since its release in the second half of October 2022. The album holds the record for the most first-day streams on Spotify (184.6 million streams, according to Guinness) and Swift is the most streamed act in a 24-hour period on Spotify (228 million streams).

Physical versions of the album are also creating history. Guinness confirmed that Midnights is the USA’s fastest-selling vinyl album since sales tracking began in 1991. 575,000 copies of the album were sold in its first week, along with 395,000 CDs and 10,000 cassettes. In October, ARIA revealed that Midnights had the biggest first week of vinyl sales ever in Australia, with over 10,000 copies sold.

Midnights is the fastest-selling vinyl album since records began

In the UK, Midnights not only achieved the biggest first-week sales of a vinyl album in chart history, but it’s now the highest selling vinyl album of the 21st century (according to The Guardian). The success of Midnights meant that the UK’s annual revenue from vinyl sales overtook that generated by CD sales for the first time since 1987.

Several other new releases sold big quantities of vinyl in the UK in 2022, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association. Harry Styles’ Harry House came in at #2, followed by Arctic Monkeys’ The Car (#3), Liam Gallagher’s C’Mon You Know (#4) and Wet Leg’s Wet Leg (#5).

The top ten also included Fleetwood Mac’s indefatigable Rumours (#7) and Arctic Monkeys’ 2013 release AM (#10), while new albums from Muse, Fontaines D.C. and The 1975 rounded out the list, coming in at #6, #8 and #9 respectively.

Further Reading

The 2023 Grammy Award Nominations Have Been Announced

Spotify Wrapped: Australia’s Most Streamed Artists, Songs, Albums & Podcasts Of 2022

Taylor Swift Just Became The First Artist To Sweep The Billboard Hot 100’s Entire Top 10

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