With a 53% year-over-year increase in sales last quarter, I think it’s safe to say vinyl isn’t just a fad anymore. Classic artists like the Beatles and Pink Floyd aren’t the only ones enjoying this vinyl comeback either, modern artists like Lana Del Rey and Jack White have sold tens of thousands of records over the past five years, and things don’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.
The vinyl comeback story just keeps on spinning. New research published just in time for Record Store Day drives home the point: vinyl has been on a real tear over the past half-decade, and the purple patch isn’t fading just yet. According to Nielsen, U.S. album sales between January and March of this year were 53% higher than during the comparable period last year, driven largely by solid gains in catalog album sales. Current releases in the format are also performing well, up by 37% in the first three months compared with the corresponding period last time. In a wider-angle look at the market, vinyl album sales have grown by 260% since 2009, Nielsen reports, with vinyl unit sales rising to 9.2 million last year, up from 6.1 million in 2013. Check out the graph below.
