RSD Black Friday Exceeds All Previous Sales Records; Bigger Than Ever

Article Contributed by Vicious Kid PR | Published on Monday, December 4, 2023

Before Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday--the organizers of Record Store Day began the RSD Black Friday event as a way to highlight and include independent record stores in the biggest shopping day of the year. Since then, record stores have started the holiday shopping season with an RSD Black Friday twist: a curated list of releases created especially for them, adding to the mix of items already found in record stores, all of which make exceptionally good gifts.

It has been a phenomenal success and this year’s Black Friday sales of the Top 500 bestsellers were up 25% over 2022, and individual stores report weekend year-over-year increases as high as 40%!  

According to the data collection company Street Pulse, the best selling records at independent record stores that weekend was Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts: the secret tracks which was released on opaque deep purple vinyl, etched with a Butterfly on Side B. And even though Taylor Swift did not have a specific RSD Black Friday release, she was still the 4th biggest-selling artist at record stores on Black Friday weekend.

Though some titles, like the never-before-on-vinyl Cape Elizabeth from Noah Kahan sold out quickly, other releases across all genres, including special packages from Post Malone, De La Soul, Joni Mitchell, U2, Dr. Dre and Jerry Garcia remain, as intended, for shoppers to discover in record store bins this season, ready to be wrapped up! A chart of the Top 50 RSD Black Friday titles can be found on the Record Store Day website or at bit.ly/RSDBFCHART

This year, there’s another way to bring home record store exclusives: the RSD MRKT publicly launched at https://rsdmrkt.com.  A brand-new marketplace platform for brick-and-mortar record stores to sell new product, the RSD MRKT offers customers a chance to search for and find specific releases, including Record Store Day and RSD Black Friday releases from 2023 and past events, titles in the RSD Essentials line from Cured Vinyl/Think Indie and indie-exclusive variants of wide releases. With more than 260 stores and over 25,000 titles at launch, the 24/7 online record store fair is off to a booming start!

Black Friday Top 25 Best Sellers at Independent Record Stores

Rank

Artist

Title

Label

1

OLIVIA RODRIGO

GUTS: THE SECRET TRACKS

GEFFEN

2

NOAH KAHAN

CAPE ELIZABETH EP 

REPUBLIC

3

LINKIN PARK

LOST DEMOS

WARNER BROS.

4

DOORS

LIVE FROM BAKERSFIELD, AUGUST 21st, 1970 

RHINO/ELEKTRA ENTERTAINMENT

5

POST MALONE

DIAMOND COLLECTION 

REPUBLIC

6

U2

UNDER A BLOOD RED SKY 

ISLAND

7

BILLY STRINGS

CALIFORNIA SOBER (FEAT. WILLIE NELSON) 

REPRISE

8

GRATEFUL DEAD

FILLMORE WEST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 3/2/1969

GRATEFUL DEAD

9

RILO KILEY

UNDER THE BLACKLIGHT 

WARNER BROS.

10

VARIOUS ARTIST

JAZZ DISPENSARY: AT THE MOVIES 

CRAFT RECORDINGS

11

COHEED & CAMBRIA

LIVE AT THE STARLAND BALLROOM, August 20th 2004 

COLUMBIA RECORDS

12

GRAM PARSONS AND THE FALLEN ANGELS

THE LAST ROUNDUP: LIVE FROM THE BIJOU CAFÉ IN PHILADELPHIA 

AMOEBA RECORDS

13

JERRY GARCIA & JOHN KAHN

PURE JERRY: MARIN VETERANS MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM, SAN RAFAEL, CA - February 28th, 1986 

ATO RECORDS

14

WILLIE NELSON

SHOTGUN WILLIE (50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION)

RHINO/ATLANTIC

15

JONI MITCHELL

COURT AND SPARK DEMOS

RHINO/ELEKTRA ENTERTAINMENT

16

BEACH BOYS

BEACH BOYS' CHRISTMAS ALBUM 

CAPITOL

17

ENGLISH BEAT

I JUST CAN'T STOP IT

RHINO/ATLANTIC

18

DEATH GRIPS

GOVERNMENT PLATES

VIRGIN

19

FACES

HAD ME A REAL GOOD TIME WITH FACES! 

RHINO

20

SCREAMING TREES

LIVE AT EGG STUDIOS 

SCREAMING TREES LLC

21

FLAMING LIPS

YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOT - LIVE AT THE PARADISE LOUNGE, BOSTON OCTOBER 27th, 2002 

WARNER BROS.

22

TAYLOR SWIFT

1989 (TAYLOR'S VERSION)

REPUBLIC

23

CZARFACE

CZARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (STOLE THE BALL EDITION) 

SILVER AGE, LLC

24

MY MORNING JACKET

HAPPPY HOLIDAY! 

ATO RECORDS

25

VARIOUS ARTIST

ASTEROID CITY - ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK

ABKCO

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