Vinyl certainly isn't dead
With all of the hoo-ha surrounding Taylor Swift's decision to pull her tracks from Spotify, it's easy to forget that downloads and streaming aren't the only ways people get their music. Many still buy CDs, although album sales have nearly halved in four years, and then there's vinyl. Normally reserved for audiophiles, collectors and old-school DJs, the humble vinyl record is making a comeback, thanks, in part, to hipsters bucking the streaming trend. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), annual UK album sales on the format passed the one-million mark for the first time since 1996, and are on track to reach 1.2 million sales before the year is out.
As a testament to the varied scope of vinyl enthusiasts, the most popular vinyl albums of the year include AM by the Arctic Monkeys and Pink Floyd's first album in 20 years, The Endless River, which eclipsed 6,000 sales in its first week to become the fastest-selling vinyl album this century. It means that vinyl is now worth £20 million to the music industry and accounts for 2 percent of total UK album sales. It's a small but important milestone, and it's significant enough that the Music Charts Company has decided to dedicate a weekly chart to the format. Cheers, Shoreditch.
[Image credit: acidpix, Flickr]
