Record Store Day 2017 caused a 200% sales increase for independent record stores

RSD17 was the vinyl event's most successful year in history.

With 547,000 albums sold in one week, Record Store Day 2017 was the most successful celebrations of the vinyl industry in recent history.

Neilsen Music has released data via Billboard from this year’s Record Store Day event – which happens to be the celebration’s 10th anniversary. The data shows a massive win for both the vinyl format and the yearly event.

According to The Vinyl Factory, for the week of Record Store Day (ending April 27), album sales in independent music shops increased by 197% compared to the week previous. For vinyl specifically, the increase is a whopping 484% which equates to 409,000 albums on vinyl sold.

Advertisement

The numbers are even bigger for 12″s specifically as their sales figures jumped up 4,350%, represented by an increase of 2,000 sales to 89,000 from week to week.

And this is just for independent record stores. If you take into account the high-street stores participating in RSD, there is a 213% increase in total album sales. This is officially the biggest non-Christmas period week for album sales since Nielsen began in 1991.

Compared to last year’s RSD, this event saw a 1.4% growth across the board. This is in part due to the high quality of the exclusive records, like the reissue of David Bowie’s 1971 ‘BOWPROMO’ demo.

Read more: Record Store Day releases begin appearing on eBay

This year’s Record Store Day ambassador was announced – via a Funny Or Die sketch – to be St. Vincent. This position has previously been held by the likes of Jack White, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme.

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories