Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’ Reissue Hits Top 10 on Billboard’s Album Sales Chart

Keith Caulfield
·7 min read

Pink Floyd’s Animals surges back onto Billboard’s album charts (dated Oct. 1) following its reissue on Sept. 16.

The set, first released in 1977, re-enters Top Album Sales at No. 3 with 20,000 copies sold in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 22, according to Luminate (up from 500 copies sold in the previous week). It’s the biggest sales week for any Pink Floyd album since 2014 and Animals’ highest rank on the 31-year-old chart.

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Animals also re-enters at No. 1 on the Catalog Albums chart (its first week at No. 1 and the act’s fifth leader on the 31-year-old list), and impacts the top five on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Tastemaker Albums and Vinyl Albums. It also bounds back onto the Billboard 200 at No. 21 – the set’s first visit to the top 40, and highest rank, since 1977. That year it peaked at No. 3 for three weeks (on the charts dated March 5-19).

The five-song, 42-minute album was reissued in a new mix on CD, vinyl, Blu-ray, SACD and digital download configurations ranging in price from $12.99 to $29.98. All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes.

A deluxe box set edition of Animals is due out on Oct. 7. The four-disc set (containing vinyl LP/CD/DVD and Blu-ray discs) currently sells for $99.98 in Pink Floyd’s official webstore and is packaged in a hardcover book with a 32-page booklet. Notably, while the reissues all present a freshened up 2018 mix of the album, there are no additional bonus tracks added to the release.

The Animals reissue was meant to be released a few years ago, but was delayed due to a dispute over the package’s then-planned liner notes — which were ultimately not included in the finished product.

Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Top Rock & Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative albums, and rock albums, respectively, by equivalent album units. Catalog Albums lists the week’s most popular older (catalog) titles by equivalent album units. Tastemaker Albums ranks the week’s best-selling albums at independent and small chain record stores. Vinyl Albums tallies the top-selling vinyl albums of the week.

Of Animals’ 20,000 copies sold in the week after its reissue, physical sales comprise 19,000 (8,500 on vinyl; 6,000 on CD; and 4,500 on other physical formats) and digital downloads comprise 1,000.

The 20,000 sum marks the band’s best sales week for any album since its final studio album, The Endless River, sold 29,000 copies in its seventh week of release, in the week ending Dec. 28, 2014. (The album sold in excess of 20,000 copies in each of its first seven weeks. It debuted with 179,000 sold.)

At No. 1 on Top Album Sales, BLACKPINK lands its second leader with Born Pink’s debut atop the tally. It sold 75,500 copies in its first week, largely from CD sales. Bowing at No. 2 is NCT 127’s 2 Baddies with 55,500 copies sold. It’s the fourth top 10-charting effort for the ensemble, and all four have reached the top two.

FLETCHER scores her first top 10 on Top Album Sales as her full-length debut studio set Girl of My Dreams debuts at No. 4 with 16,000 copies sold. Ozzy Osbourne’s chart-topping Patient Number 9 falls to No. 5 in its second week with 15,000 sold (down 72%).

Marcus Mumford’s solo debut effort (self-titled) starts at No. 6 with 11,000 sold. Previously, he visited the list as part of Mumford & Sons, notching nine charting efforts between 2010 and 2018, including three No. 1s (Babel, in 2012; Wilder Mind in 2015 and Delta in 2018).

John Coltrane’s Blue Train, first released in 1957, debuts at No. 7 on Top Album Sales following its 65th anniversary expanded reissue on multiple formats on Sept. 16. The set sold 11,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 22, according to Luminate – the largest sales week of 2022 for any Coltrane album. All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes.

It’s the third top 10-charting effort for Coltrane, who died in 1967, on the 31-year-old Top Album Sales chart. Further, Blue Train also debuts at No. 1 on both the overall Jazz Albums chart and Traditional Jazz Albums chart (his seventh leader on both). It also scores Coltrane his first leader on the 11-year-old Vinyl Albums chart. Blue Train additionally enters at No. 6 on Tastemaker Albums and No. 95 on the Billboard 200.

Blue Train was reissued in two versions as part of Blue Note Records’ Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series: a mono edition of the original five track album, and an expanded stereo edition (dubbed Blue Train: The Complete Masters). The latter adds seven alternate and incomplete takes (four of which are previously unreleased). The mono set was reintroduced on vinyl, while the Complete edition was reissued on two-LP vinyl, a double CD and digital download.

Of the album’s 11,000 in total sales for the week, essentially all were physical sales – with just over 10,000 on vinyl and a little under 1,000 on CD. (A negligible number of digital download albums were also sold.)

Notably, Blue Train logs the largest sales week for a jazz album on vinyl in 2022. The last larger week for a jazz set was registered by the evergreen soundtrack to the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, when it sold 20,000 copies in the week ending Dec. 23, 2021.

Further, Blue Train is the first jazz album to lead the Vinyl Albums chart in nearly five years – since A Charlie Brown Christmas topped the tally on the Dec. 16, 2017-dated list.

Back on the new Top Album Sales chart, Clutch secures its third top 10-charting effort with Sunrise on Slaughter Beach debuting at No. 8 with 10,500 sold (with 5,000 of that sum on vinyl). TWICE’s former leader Between 1&2: 11th Mini Album falls 5-9 with just over 10,000 (down 15%). Death Cab for Cutie’s new studio album Asphalt Meadows starts at No. 10 with 10,000 sold – marking the sixth top 10 for the act.

In the week ending Sept. 22, there were 1.746 million albums sold in the U.S. (up 5.3% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.380 million (up 5.5%) and digital albums comprised 365,000 (up 4.2%).

There were 705,000 CD albums sold in the week ending Sept. 22 (up 10.6% week-over-week) and 661,000 vinyl albums sold (up 0.3%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 24.817 million (down 8.1% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 27.862 million (up 0.5%).

Overall year-to-date album sales total 67.942 million (down 8% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 53.060 million (down 3.6%) and digital album sales total 14.881 million (down 20.9%).

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