Jack White’s new album debuts at #1, sets one-week vinyl sales record

Jack White, formerly of The White Stripes, The Dead Weather, and The Raconteurs, notched second consecutive number one album last week, with the debut of Lazaretto.

The album sold 138,000 copies in its first week of release. Perhaps more impressively, 40,000 of those copies were vinyl–meaning that 28.9% of all the copies sold were on old-school LPs. That’s just a tick lower than the number of compact discs sold: 41,000, or 30%.

Previously, the record for most copies of a record sold in one week belonged to Pearl Jam, whose monster 1994 release Vitality sold 34,000 in 1994.

White is a well-known vinyl lover; there are even, as an extra incentive to buy the album on vinyl, two bonus tracks etched into the playing surface. One is audible at 45 rpm, the other at 78 rpm.

And, earlier this year, White broke the record for fastest studio-to-store album release. White recorded the title track to Lazaretto in his own Third Man Records studio in Nashville, pressed the recording to vinyl across town, then rushed the finished product back to fans celebrating Record Store Day a mere three hours, 55 minutes, and 21 seconds later.

White is on tour in Europe and North America well into the fall.