The White Stripes might be bigger than David Bowie, according to our math

Vinyl lovers spent this past Saturday combing through their local independent record stores in honor of Record Store Day — though I’m sure their millions upon millions of tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram selfies tipped you off to that.

While scrolling through my social-media feeds yesterday, I started to get curious about which albums people were buying and whether the much-hyped RSD special releases were as big a deal as promised. So, I scrolled through the various hashtags (#RecordStoreDay, #RSD15, etc.) and trending topics on Instagram (and Twitter and Facebook to a lesser extent) to take a random sampling of the purchases users had made.

Note that this is by no means an extensive consumer report and that my findings only reflect what people posted about on social media — I mean, how many old dudes are taking selfies with their Pat Boone vinyl? Still, let’s dive in.

Percentage of Albums by Decade

• 31.3% from the 2010s

• 15% from the 2000s

• 12.5% from the 1990s

• 16.2% from the 1980s

• 21.2% from the 1970s

• 6.3% from the 1960s

• 2.5% from the 1950s

Most Popular Artists by Number of Posts

1. The White Stripes, 8.8%

2. David Bowie, 7.5%

3. Father John Misty, 6.2%

4. Neil Patrick Harris and the cast of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” 5%

5. Brand New, 3.8%

Other RSD Findings

• 51.3% of the albums people posted about buying were RSD exclusives.

• Coolest RSD-exclusive packaging I saw: either Father John Misty’s heart-shaped I Loved You, Honeybee, or J Dilla’s badge-shaped Fuck the Police.

• I’m really glad I wasn’t in Soho (the London one) today.

• This person has really good taste.

• And I really wish this ironic tweet wasn’t so ironic.

https://twitter.com/alreadytaken74/status/589331985539162112

Bad at filling out bios seeks same.