Sales of albums on vinyl records in the United Kingdom outpaced digital album sales for the first time ever, an entertainment industry trade group reported Thursday.
“In this past week in the U.K. we saw vinyl sales of 2.4 million pounds, and a digital download album sales of only 2.1 million pounds,” said Kim Bayley, CEO of the Entertainment Retailers Association, reported WTOP.com. “That’s the first and only normal week for many years where vinyl albums have outsold digital albums, other than Record Store Day.”
By contrast, here in the U.S., the Recording Industry Association of America found vinyl album sales in the first half of 2016 were slightly more than half the amount of digital downloads, WTOP reported.
Even so, vinyl sales in the U.S. are at a 28-year high and rising, while compact disc sales are dropping, as Fortune reported in April.
While for older consumers, buying a record is partly based on “nostalgia,” for younger consumers a vinyl record “creates a new experience for people who were born during the digital age,” said consumer electronics researcher Barbara Kraus, Fortune reported.
“In terms of accessing music on the go, streaming is really now the dominant format, because it offers all you can eat: everything in a very easy way. But others want to own the product — they want the physical, tangible product,” Ms. Bayley said, WTOP reported.
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