Record Store Day 2026 Report: ‘Biggest Year Ever’ for Many Retailers as Taylor Swift, Charli xcx & More Titles Fly Off Shelves

While it appears that this year’s Record Store Day (RSD) is slightly bigger on a unit count basis, courtesy of the latest count from Luminate for the week ending April 23, it’s unclear if, on a revenue basis, that will also turn out to be true. Nevertheless, already a number of well-known indie record stores are declaring the event on Saturday (April 18) as their best day ever — except for the Newbury Comics chain, which calls it the second biggest single day in company history.

Among the stores touting the 2026 RSD as their best-ever are Rough Trade Records in Manhattan, N.Y.;  Down In The Valley in Minneapolis; Monster Music & Movies in Charleston, S.C.; Licorice Pizza in Studio City, Calif.;  Looney Tunes Records on Long Island in West Babylon, N.Y.; and Music Millennium in Portland, Ore.

The big records during the day were RSD titles from Taylor Swift, Laufey, KPop Demon Hunters, Bruce Springsteen, Charli xcx, Carly Rae Jepsen, Pink Floyd, KATSEYE, Bruno Mars, Olivia Dean, Ethel Cain and Brandi Carlile.

On a unit basis, this year’s RSD was slightly bigger than the week that contained RSD last year, with physical album sales coming in at 2.276 million units in the U.S. versus last year’s 2.241 million units. (Last year, due to a banking holiday in some international territories, RSD fell on the second Saturday of April instead of the traditional third Saturday of April, like it did this year.) However, last year, vinyl — the most expensive album format — outpaced this year’s RSD week vinyl sales 1.482 million to 1.409 million units; while this year’s RSD week CD sales topped last year’s sales, coming in at 627,000 versus 519,000 units, according to Luminate data.

Overall, this year’s RSD was “fantastic,” Stephen Godfrey, co-owner and president of Rough Trade, tells Billboard’s Retail Track via a phone interview on the Monday after RSD (April 20). “Our biggest year ever by some distance, and for the first time we beat out our flagship store in London.”

Since Rough Trade moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan to occupy space in one of NYC’s landmark locations, Rockefeller Center, its RSD Festivities have grown proportionally. Every year for RSD, the store puts on the Rough Trade and Rockefeller Center Present Indieplaza, which this year featured eight bands: Weird Nightmare, Nouvo Testamento, Friko, Winter, Momma (Duo), Hotline TNT, Incendiary and headliner Superchunk. During band setups, three  DJs, including Saint Virgil, Soul in the Horn and Avalon Emerson, took turns spinning records.  The day began at noon and wound up sometime after 9 p.m.

Now that Rough Trade has two locations, the store can handle crowds, making for shorter lines. Initially, the store funnels the RSD line to what’s known as Rough Trade Below in the Rockefeller Center retail concourse, where the entrances to the subway are. That space is much larger than Rough Trade Above on Sixth Avenue. Godfrey reports that as the day went on, they also began to stock Rough Trade Above with RSD titles.

While it’s unclear what time people began lining up at the store for RSD this year — it usually begins on the Friday before the event — the line wound up being the biggest Rough Trade had ever seen, according to eyewitnesses. The line stretched from its Sixth Avenue location all the way around the corner onto 49th Street, past the Rockefeller Center Plaza — where the ice-skating rink is and where the Indieplaza event is staged — and almost reached Fifth Avenue, Godfrey reports. He adds that he wishes the store had more copies of Charli xcx, Laura Marling and Cain, all of which were big sellers at Rough Trade.

Godfrey reports that Sunday was another very good sales day. That, he says, was due to the company spending a lot of time to ensure its website, which listed leftover RSD titles from the day before, was able to handle the amount of web traffic coming in from searches for those titles.

Godfrey says the Indieplaza event serves the same purpose as the Rough Trade store. “We are presenting great music to the largest audience as we can,” he says. Consequently, the Indieplaza event “brings in all ages and musical tastes and people from across the boroughs and beyond to celebrate as one large family. We present a diversity of music that we had throughout the day.” He adds that the plaza was mobbed, with a crowd stretching from 49th Street to 50th Street.

“The event allows the crowd to enjoy a location which is unlike anywhere else, with the music bouncing off the skyscrapers that surround the plaza,” Godfrey says. 

Retail Track spied Beggers Banquet and Rough Trade owner Martin Mills enjoying the crowd at Indieplaza. Mills told Retail Track he was very happy that the store puts together an event like that. 

A highlight for the crowd that day was Incendiary, a rock-n’-rap band reminiscent of Rage Against the Machine. The crowd was packed during the group’s time on stage, and two-thirds of the crowd left as soon as the set ended, although about 100 people stayed behind to buy Incendiary merch.

Godfrey says Incendiary had previously played inside the store to a great reaction, with fans jumping off counters and crowd-surfing, leading to their invitation to play the Indieplaza show.

Meanwhile, up in New England, Newbury Comics had a bang-up day, even if it was only the company’s second-best day ever for vinyl behind RSD 2024, says Newbury Comics’ director of brand engagement Carl Mello. But even with that, sell-through wasn’t as good as they optimistically hoped for when the chain first put in its order, says Mello, who admitted: “We will probably have some stuff to mark down tomorrow.”

The biggest sellers for the chain were the Pink Floyd and Swift singles, thanks to Newbury Comics having plenty of stock on the latter title, Mello says. Other big sellers were Dean, KPop Demon Hunters, KATSEYE and Charli xcx.

“Our biggest disappointment was the Jeff Buckley title,” Mello says. “That was a brick for us.”

While there tends to be online criticism toward record stores during RSD, especially around pricing and allotments, Mello says, “Every year RSD seems to [get] better and more people come out. On the night before RSD, you can see pictures [on the internet] of the long lines outside the store, so you already know it won’t be a disaster.”

As for complaints that vinyl prices are too high, Mello says, “Welcome to the world” — or in other words, high prices aren’t isolated to the music industry.

On the other hand, Karl Groeger, owner of Looney Tunes in West Babylon, N.Y., on Long Island, indicates in an email recapping the day that RSD 2025 left him almost speechless. 

“If you know me, you know I am rarely at a loss for words. Today I am…… All I can say is WOW WOW WOW! This RSD was the busiest day in our Looney Tunes 55 year history,” Groeger writes. He adds that RSD 2023 had been the best day ever, followed by RSD 2024, but that RSD 2026 shattered 2023, beating it by 32.4%. Or, as he put it, “astronomical numbers” (presumably he was referring to revenue).

Putting it in perspective, “We did more business Saturday than we did in all of [the month] of March,” Groeger says. He went on to report that Sunday, with all of its leftover RSD stock ready for sale online at 8 a.m., turned out to be the store’s biggest online sales day ever for a Sunday by more than 400%.

The store’s biggest sellers, in order, were titles from Swift, Hilary Duff, Pink Floyd, Joan Jett, Selena Gomez, Fall Out Boy, KPop Demon Hunters, Mars and Dean.

But Groeger wasn’t done providing numbers. He says the RSD line started at 4 p.m. on Friday (April 17) and that, by the time the store opened the doors at 8 a.m. on Saturday, there were 526 people waiting, the first 500 of whom were rewarded with bagels. What’s more, the first 300 customers received the store’s own RSD poster, drawn and designed by Kroeger’s brother, Jamie. Additionally, more than 100 free concert tickets were handed out to shoppers, courtesy of Live Nation. Kroeger gives a shout-out to Looney Tunes’ main supplier, Alliance Entertainment, which delivered the product on a timely basis, with a “pretty darn good” fill on the big titles, he says. In all, he reports that the store brought in 350 RSD titles for the day. 

But perhaps the most exciting occurrence at the store that day was a wedding. “Two customers who love RSD and Looney Tunes decided to get married at our store,” Groeger writes. “Was so cool!!”

Across the U.S. continent to the West Coast, Licorice Pizza in Studio City, Calif., also declared RSD 2026 its best ever, with owner Kerry Brown reporting via email, “We were by far the busiest we have ever been.” Of course, it helped to have Ziggy Marley performing at the store and having him stick around to sign his albums for fans. That led his album, Brightside, to become the store’s top seller of the day, followed by Paramore, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, Carlile, The Cure, Charli xcx and Duff. 

“RSD does a great a job of mixing up the releases, so it’s not focused on one genre, which keeps it diverse and interesting,” Brown says. “And consequently, the demographics were literally all over the map… young kids shopping with their parents and grandparents” — not to mention college kids, he adds.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Down In the Valley’s new owners, Scott and Steven Farrell, were rewarded with RSD 2026 breaking the company’s record for the best day in its 54-year history and 18th year of RSD, according to a round-up written by Scott Farrell.

“The lines of customers before opening were the largest ever in the company’s history,” Farrell writes. “We had about 1,100 folks at our Golden Valley location at open and Maple Grove [store] had an estimated 500 in line when we opened the doors. This is impressive since temperatures in Minnesota were well below freezing overnight, hovering around 20 degrees.”  

He reports the stores sold more than 5,000 vinyl records over the weekend, a company record. He reports robust CD sales, too, adding that he wishes the store had more of the Ozzy and Hello Kitty figures from Handmade By Robots, a unit of the world’s largest music wholesaler, Alliance Entertainment.

Other big sellers for Down in the Valley were Stone Temple Pilots, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Megadeth and John Prine, with Farrell noting that even the CD version of the Pink Floyd title made the store’s top 50 sellers list.

Down south in Charleston, S.C., Galen Hudson, owner of Monster Music and Movies, shares that his store’s RSD 2026 eclipsed the prior year by 7%. According to Hudson, the line started the night before at 7 p.m. and had grown to 150 people by 7 a.m. By the time the store opened at 8 a.m., more shoppers had arrived, but by then, employees were too busy to keep counting.

While Monster Music saw similar best-selling titles as other RSD participants this year, the store also counted Billy Strings, Prine, Mutemath and Talking Heads among its top sellers for the weekend. What’s more, he adds that the store sold out and could have used more Cain, Lil Peep, Bluey and Peter Gabriel records.

Heading back to the West Coast, Portland, Ore.’s Music Millennium reports the store was up 12.6% over last year, making this its best RSD yet, according to the RSD wrap-up from owner Terry Currier, which Retail Track obtained via e-mail.

Along with best-selling titles from the likes of Swift, Dean, Mars and Pink Floyd, Currier also says Adrianne Lenker’s Live At Revolution Hall 42 made the store’s top five sellers for the day. Like Groeger, Currier also praises the diversified offering, especially the titles that brought in younger music fans, including releases from Paramore, Cain, KPop Demon Hunters, Lucy Dacus, Jepsen, Gomez and Demi Lovato. Slower-moving titles included Buckley, The Who, Jerry Garcia, Neil Young and Mark Knopfler. 

Music Millennium also witnessed hundreds of people lining up for the store’s opening on Saturday, with the first person showing up on Friday. By the time the store opened at 10 a.m., Currier reports that over 400 people were in line. Music Millennium rewarded the customers in line with a plethora of giveaways, including muffins, coffee, doughnuts and 350 goodie bags from other local merchants. Monster Energy also handed out free items. What’s more, KINK FM handed out station swag for about six hours, including t-shirts, water bottles and stickers. Finally, Currier notes that the store collaborated with Berlin Brewing and John’s Market and made a limited-edition beer for the day, offering 25 cases.

“Like vinyl collectors,” he writes, “beer geeks have to have a limited-edition brew.”

Kristin Robinson provided assistance in preparing this story.