Vinyl sales are booming in 2021, thanks to Abba.

Adele, Abba, and Ed Sheeran's albums helped sell the UK's top five million vinyl for the first time since 1991. Nearly a quarter of albums purchased that year (23%) were on LPs, with Abbas Voyage best-selling.

This is the 14th consecutive year of growth, with sales up 8% compared to 2020. CD sales continued to decline. Only 14 million discs were purchased - the lowest since 1984, a year after the UK launched the format. However, the decline in CD sales has been less than in recent years, with a 12% drop from nearly a third in 2020.

That's partly because artists like Abba and Adele are favored by older listeners who still prefer the form. Music industry organization BPI said it expects CD demand to have "declined" after years of declines.

The vinyl renaissance continues in 2021 despite severe production delays caused by a combination of Covid, supply chain issues, and labor shortages, as well as bottlenecks in raw materials such as PVC and paper products.

A report accused Adele of further clogging up the world's vinyl factories with pre-orders for her new album 30 - but her orders of 500,000 records represented only 0.3% of the records released that year. (The bigger problem is that demand for vinyl exceeds production capacity by a factor of 2:1).

In the end, Adele's return was overshadowed by Abba, who shocked the world in September by announcing their first album with new material in more than 40 years.

Titled Voyage, it moved 29,891 copies in its first week of sales following an extensive pre-order campaign that gave fans early access to tickets for next year's virtual Sweden concert.

Best selling vinyl album for 2021. Estimate based on previous sales.

Although they make up a small share of the music market, sales of cassettes also increased for the ninth year in a row.

Final data for 2021 is expected to show that approximately 190,000 cassettes have been purchased in the last 12 months, which is about 20% more annually.

This was the most successful year for the format since 2003 when Now 54 became the band's top-selling year.