Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever Debuts at No. 1 With Massive Vinyl Sales Week
Eilish moved 73,000 vinyl copies of her sophomore album, giving her the second-biggest vinyl sales week since at least 1991
By Matthew Strauss
Billie Eilish, July 2021 (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Spotify)
Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever has debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. The album sold 238,000 equivalent units, including 153,000 in traditional sales. Of the 153,000 sales, 129,000 were in physical formats (73,000 on vinyl, 46,000 on CD, and just under 10,000 on cassette), with another 24,000 coming via digital downloads, according to Billboard.
As The New York Times points out, too, Happier Than Ever had the second-highest vinyl sales week since at least 1991. (SoundScan—the predecessor to MRC Data, which is Billboard's tracking arm—first began to keep accurate data on music sales in 1991.) Earlier this year, Taylor Swift set the record for the biggest week when Evermore sold 102,00 vinyl copies. Notably, there were six months to pre-order Evermore as the vinyl LP got released long after the album was available digitally. In comparison, there were just three months to pre-order Happier Than Ever. Eilish did, however, offer eight vinyl variants of her album, while Swift offered just three Evermore variants.
TagsIndustry NewsBillie EilishPop/R&B