UK Vinyl Record Sales Jump 55% So Far This Year, U.S. Vinyl Sales Up 37%
(UPDATED) Sales of vinyl records totalled 168,296 units for the first half of 2011, according to new data released today by Retail Gazette. That's a 55% rise compared to the first six months of 2010. Radiohead’s King of Limbs was the most popular vinyl album release in the last six months of 2011 for the format shifting 20,771 copies.
In the U.S., 3.6 million LPs were sold in the first half of this year According to Nielsen SoundScan. That's a 37% percent increase from the same period in 2010.
“Whether it is the ‘warmer’ sound many music fans appreciate, the large-scale artwork of a 12-inch sleeve or its sheer retro appeal, vinyl seems to be capturing the imagination of buyers despite the fact it typically costs twice as much as a CD containing exactly the same music,” according to Kim Bayley, Director General of Entertainment Retailers Association.
Top 10 IK Vinyl Albums Jan-June 2011 (according to the Official Charts Company)
- Radiohead – King of Limbs
- Beady Eye – Different Gear Still Speeding
- Adele – 21
- Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
- Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys
- Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
- Foo Fighters – Wasting Light
- Noah & The Whale – Last Night On Earth
- Vaccines – What Did You Expect From the Vaccines
- Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
That’s because music lovers pick their albums carefully (on the whole… Beady Eye seems a tad anomolous 🙂 and buy music to engage in the full experience. Nothing beats flipping a disc to hear side 2, or the hiss and crackles that come with a slightly dirty piece of vinyl, or slipping it out of it’s sleeve in the first place and learning a 12×12″ piece of coloured cardboard against something whilst you put a 12″ slab of vinyl on a turntable and drop the needle on it.
Spotify on your phone most definitely doesn’t beat it. And stolen mp3s, as cost effective as they are, don’t beat it either.
I have about 200 records in my studio. Vinyl is important because there are records out there that will never be transfered into digital music.
They “can” be transferred into digital music: It just takes the right equipment, patience and quite some time to spend transferring them.
I would say obviously it won’t be the same experience, but it’s better to carry a 200 gram device which holds 200 vinyls over carrying 200 vinyls in, say, your backpack. 😛
My two questions:
Is it beneficial for independant artists to produce vinyl or do vinyl collectors only pick up the major artists mostly? I would think that there are less choices of new music on vinyl and therefore people who collect vinyl will be more likely to pick up indie artists. I could be wrong though.
What happens when an album is mastered poorly and clips incredibly? Does it sound better or worse or the same on vinyl? Is the needle more likely to jump the groove?
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I´m from spain and for independent artists is more cheap realise his job in vinyl than Cd but the problem is arrive to the public and distribute the product. That makes that normally they choose CD.
If the album is mastered poorly of course the sound it´s not good. It´s easier that jumps whith a not good needle.
That´s a good thing that increase the sales, and make me happy see a Radiohead and Foo Fighters on the top 🙂