David Bowie The UK’s Highest Selling Artist On Vinyl Since 2000
David Bowie is the UK’s highest selling artist on vinyl since 2020, according to new figures from Music Week.
Bowie’s UK vinyl sales for the 2000s (calculated up until 2 January 2021) stand at 582,704, a figure which places him just ahead of the only other act to top half a million units on the format – The Beatles (535,596 sales).
If the 2020s are taken solely into account, the same two acts still lead the way with Bowie on 134,237 combined sales and The Beatles on 113,613.
In terms of combined UK vinyl sales in 2021 meanwhile, Bowie was actually third (53,181) behind The Beatles (58,567) and Taylor Swift (56,917).
And Bowie’s vinyl sales show no sign of slowing, thanks to a steady stream of archival releases. Last week the latest of these – the previously-unreleased 2000 album, Toy, hit the UK Top 5. Total week one sales for Toy were 7,400, including almost 1,000 sales of the deluxe vinyl box, 5,851 CD box sets priced at £26 (currently sold out on the official store) as well as 240 downloads and 304 sales-equivalent streams.
Toy is Bowie’s 35th Top 10 album (including Tin Machine releases). It was the week’s overall biggest seller on physical formats (based on substantial CD volume), but another Bowie LP – one of three Top 40 entries – claimed the most vinyl sales of any album in the past week.
Hunky Dory, released to mark its 50th anniversary at the end of 2021, made a re-entry at No 31 – its highest position since 2017 – with 2,081 of its 2,550 sales in the week from vinyl, mostly the anniversary picture disc version. Hunky Dory, one of Bowie’s most celebrated albums, has post-1994 sales of 536,368 including 444,214 physical copies.
The third album appearance from Bowie in the latest chart is the 2016 best of compilation, Legacy, which jumped from No 38 to No 19 with 3,231 sales, reaching the highest chart position it has managed for exactly a year amid the Bowie75 campaign activity.