THE recent resurgence of vinyl has been confirmed with the news that vinyl album sales outstripped digital album downloads for the first time ever in the UK last week.
Data provided by the Electronic Retailers’ Association shows that £2.4m was spent on vinyl albums last week as opposed to the £2.1m spent on digital downloads. The figures are in stark contrast with the statistics that were recorded during the same week last year when £1.2m of vinyl sales was dwarfed by £4.4m in digital downloads.
Vinyl’s triumph has been described by an ERA spokesperson as “a significant shift in consumer spending habits over the last 12 months” and follows the news earlier this year that sales of the format had increased in the UK for the eighth year in a row. Its comeback has been a hot topic of discussion in recent times and while the same ERA report indicates that overall music sales are down, it is pleasing to know that more music fans are investing in the time-tested format in an age when music is largely free through a number of online streaming services.
Whether this is evidence of a trend in statistics is yet to be seen though; the ERA are attributing the upswing in sales this year to Record Store Black Friday, Christmas time and the fact that vinyl has become more accessible around the UK with a greater number of retailers such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco now stocking the format.
