Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever debuts at # 1 with massive vinyl sales week

Billie Eilish Happier than ever debuted atop the Billboard 200 album 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), and another 24,000 were from digital downloads, according to Billboard.

Like The New York Times also underlines, Happier than ever recorded the second highest week of vinyl sales since at least 1991. (SoundScan, the predecessor of MRC Data, which is Billboard’s tracking arm, began keeping accurate data on music sales in 1991. ) Earlier this year, Taylor Swift set the record for the biggest week in which Always sold 102.00 vinyl copies. Notably, there were six months to pre-order Always because the vinyl LP came out long after the album was available digitally. In comparison, there were only three months left to pre-order. Happier than ever. Eilish, however, offered eight vinyl variations of his album, while Swift only offered three. Always variants.