From ‘Rumours’ to ‘Their Greatest Hits’: What is the best-selling vinyl album of all time?
Once viewed as an obsolete format, reserved only for the select few DJs and stalwarts keeping hold of their collections, vinyl is unavoidable in the modern age.
Ever since the great vinyl revival of the 2010s, the format has been growing in popularity all across the world, causing more and more people to ditch the digital world in favour of record shops, turntables, and wax. Sales of vinyl records reportedly rose a whopping 9.1% in the UK last year, but we have yet to see any new releases challenging the classics for the title of the best-selling vinyl record of all time.
Phonograph records have been around, in one form or another, since the Victorian era, but it was during the 1950s that the format we now recognise as ‘vinyl’ first burst onto the scene, in its familiar 45 rpm and 33⅓ rpm formats. These two formats revolutionised not just the way that people listened to music but the music industry in its entirety. So, it is no surprise that vinyl remained the most dominant music format for multiple decades, even when new formats like compact cassettes or 8-track tapes hit the market.
Vinyl had the advantage over those other formats, of course. For starters, the sound quality of a phonographic record is much richer than what is achievable on a tape, and tapes tend to deteriorate much faster than vinyl. So, what vinyl lacked in portability, it more than made up for in quality. It was only when CDs were introduced during the 1980s that the crown was finally challenged, but it still took quite a while for CDs and, subsequently, MP3s to render the vinyl apparently obsolete.
Given the wax’s enduring reign over the music industry, it should come as no surprise that virtually all of the biggest-selling albums of all time were sold predominantly on vinyl. So, the ranking of the greatest-selling vinyl records of all time is not all that dissimilar from the list of best-selling albums of all time. After all, vinyl was king from the 1950s all the way until the 1980s, during which time many of the world’s most beloved albums hit the airwaves for the first time. The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin—they all had the vinyl as the prevailing weapon in their arsenal.
So, what is the best-selling vinyl record?
According to data from the Official Chart Company, the best-selling record in the UK in the 21st century is Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours; an impressive feat for an album that originally came out in 1977, although it becomes less surprising when you take into account the regularity with which the record is reissued. While that does give an insight into the buying habits of this new generation of vinyl collectors, it doesn’t answer what the best-selling record of all time is.
As we all know, Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the best-selling album of all time. Although exact figures are debated, it is thought that it has sold approximately 70million copies since its release in 1982. Initially, the album was only issued on LP and cassette—it wasn’t until 1983 that a CD copy was released—so it is likely that the majority of those early sales were on vinyl. In fact, it is estimated that the album sold 34million copies on vinyl, placing it only one place behind the best-selling record of all time, Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits.
The Eagles produced some of the most successful soft rock records of all time, with works like ‘Hotel California’ defining American mainstream rock for multiple decades. However, it was their 1976 compilation album, Their Greatest Hits, which became the band’s best-selling. To date, the album has gone 38 times Platinum, and it is estimated to have sold around 38million copies on vinyl.
In fairness, the album does have the edge over Thriller in terms of vinyl being a much more dominant music format in 1976 than it was in 1982, along with classic rock fans being much more susceptible to sticking with the format rather than pop fans, who might adopt new music formats more regularly.
