Americans Get Spun: US Vinyl Sales Up 40% This Year
The vinyl renaissance is for real, so says a mid-year report by Nielsen Soundscan, a company that tracks music sales across the board.
In the US alone, vinyl sales shot up 40% in the first six months of 2014, when compared to the same time period in 2013. In all, four million units were sold. Last year, customers scooped up six million units total (the highest total since 1991), which leads Riffyou.com to believe that a new ‘record’ will be set by the end of the year.
Stateside, Jack White – in what should be no surprise to anyone – led the way with 49,100 vinyl albums sold. When you release something as bad ass and revolutionary as the LP version of Lazaretto, people are going to be buying.
Arctic Monkeys came in second with 25,100 vinyl copies of AM sold, followed by Beck’s Morning Phase, which moved 21,300 units. Releases by The Black Keys, Lana Del Rey, Bob Marley & the Wailers, The Beatles, Lorde, Mac DeMarco, and St. Vincent rounded out the top 10.
Although vinyl continues to soar in the US, total physical album sales slipped 14.9% to 121 million units sold during the first half of 2014. CD sales alone fell 19.6% to 63 million units, while digital album sales fell 11.6% to 53.8 million units.
If you haven’t bought a turntable yet, what’s stopping you?
-Adam Grant
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