Last week, Nielsen Soundscan released its mid-year report, and once again album sales were in the gutter, down 14.9 per cent from the year before. Vinyl, though, keeps plugging upwards, with sales growing 40 per cent to four million units. Even as our media is increasingly intangible, there’s a subset of people that just can’t get enough of the LP.
Not surprisingly, on-demand streaming audio from the likes of Spotify was up 42 per cent. What is surprising is that vinyl is growing at the same rate as on-demand streaming, even if the two exist on vastly different scales. In fact, the country’s biggest vinyl factory has had to invest in a huge new warehouse and 16 new presses just to keep pace with demand. It’s just the latest piece of evidence that suggest that when owning music is unnecessary, vinyl’s lovely experience is the only physical format worth bothering with. [Nielsen via QZ]