After decades of decline in sales of Vinyl records to competition with digital music sales, we are witnessing a resurgence in sales Vinyl records, record players, and record stores. With digital music and streaming services making unprecedented revenue and subscribers, physical music ownership has almost become a thing of the past. People are starting to realize that they no longer own the music they have come to love, and that without the cloud, their music libraries would disappear. So rather than pay for content as a utility service on a monthly basis like internet and power, we have begun buying vinyl again to really own our favorite albums.
There has been a resurgence in the audiohead culture of collecting physical music, and record labels and vinyl manufacturers have taken note. We’re looking forward to what the future will hold for vinyl record sales and making physical collections of our favorite new and old music.
Here’s what you need to know about sales of Vinyl Records:
- people were increasingly willing to spend upwards of £25 on a single record, and even more for limited editions.
- record companies were noticeably taking advantage of the renewed interest in vinyl and hiking prices
“We have a new generation buying vinyl, lots of teenagers and lots of people under 25, who now want to buy their favourite artists on vinyl and have something a bit more tangible, a bit more collectible. People have become keen to support their favourite artists by buying into that ownership concept. It’s very difficult to demonstrate your love of an artist if you don’t have something to hold on to.”
- “It used to be that only heritage acts or niche albums would come out as a record, but now everything does – pop albums, compilations, film soundtracks, all genres.”
- “The vast majority of releases are coming out in vinyl now,” said Bayley.
- Kim Bayley, chief executive of the Entertainment Retailers Association, attributed the surge in part to the number of places now selling records across the UK
- Vinyl has also experienced eight consecutive years of growth, despite almost dying out around 2006
- compared with the £2.1m made from digital music purchases
- Vinyl sales hit £2.4m [in 2016]
- for the first time in history, the amount of money spent on vinyl records in the UK overtook that spent on digital downloads.
- Vinyl sales outpaced digital music sales at one point last year in the U.K. In the U.S., 17.2 million units were shipped last year, with consumers 35 and younger accounting for 70%.
- Japanese sales of vinyl records have roughly octupled from 2010 levels to 799,000 units in 2016
- Since Japan has only one active record manufacturer — Toyokasei — supply often cannot keep up with demand, and many new releases are often offered in only limited quantities, according to Sony Music
- Orders will also be accepted from outside record labels.
- Sony Music installed record-cutting equipment at a Tokyo recording studio in February 2017, enabling it to produce the masters from which vinyl records are copied
- Production will resume by March 2018 at a plant in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture run by a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan)
- TOKYO — Sony will resume pressing vinyl records for the first time in nearly three decades
- At the end of 2016, sales of vinyl records outpaced digital music sales for the first time in the U.K., as The Guardian reported.
“Cutting is a delicate process, with the quality of sound affected by the depth and angle of the grooves…”
- three decades after it made its last in-house vinyl back in 1989.
- Sony has already installed record-cutting equipment at a Tokyo studio and will start pressing records again in the spring of 2018
- Fans of vinyl cite the rich sound it provides and say album art and liner notes give them a more tangible sense of connection to the music they love.
- As the creator of the Walkman and a co-developer of the CD format, Sony helped to end the era of vinyl albums
- Sony’s plan reportedly includes the possibility that it will press records on contract
- Years of double-digit growth in record sales have left vinyl press plants in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere struggling to meet demand
- fact that in 2016, “a format nearly a century old generated 3.6 percent of total global revenues is remarkable,” as NPR’s Andrew Flanagan has reported.
- Vinyl sales have seen a resurgence since around 2008
- The company says it’s installing record-cutting equipment and enlisting the help of older engineers who know how to reproduce the best sound.
- Sony Music is preparing to make its own vinyl records again in Japan
