Vinyl Record Sales Hit Modern Era High

Vinyl record purchases have hit another high in 2012, according to the 2012 Nielsen Company (US) and the British Phonographic Industry (UK) reports.  Vinyl record unit sales increased by 32.8% since 2011, selling a whopping 5 million units in the United States and United Kingdom alone.

The US report states that in 2012, LP/Vinyl unit sales increased by 700,000 to total 4.6 million sales.   In the UK, the Official Charts Company commented on the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) report stating that “vinyl sales grew for the fifth successive year with a total of 389,000 LP's sold during 2012 – an increase of 15.3% over 2011’s sales of 337,000.”

Music Hub: HMV closed down all branches across the UK
and Ireland as competition rises against digital music.

Although no reports are available for Ireland, Dublin independent record stores, such as Spindizzy Records, say that they've noticed the new trend “The major increase has been slow and it’s been over, I’d say, probably the last five/six years," says Steve Kearns.  "There’s a lot more younger people [buying vinyl], and when I mean younger, I mean 12-year-olds.

“Vinyl’s been pretty popular for a long time and just when it comes in more into the mainstream media, people latch onto it.  The irony is that CD’s will be long dead before vinyl will be.  They've been around now for a good 90-100 years and CD’s are already starting to fade out.”

In the UK, The XX’s album ‘Coexist’ was the biggest selling vinyl record of 2012, while Jack White’s ‘Blunderbuss’ was the biggest selling vinyl in the US.  Because of the modern generation’s use of purchasing music online, through iTunes or illegal torrents, it’s a definitive moment in the music industry that vinyl record purchases are steadily increasing. 

Although vinyl sales have increased over 2012, digital music is still favoured by the public.  The reports from the US and the UK state that digital music album sales increased by 28.9% to total 148 million units in 2012.

Steve, who claims “you’d have to blow my house up for me to lose my music collection” says “[digital music] is good in one way but most people listen to their music through their computer speakers and that defeats the purpose of music.”