WASHINGTON — For the first time since the beginning of digital music, music lovers spent more money in the past week on vinyl than digital downloads, according to the United Kingdom’s Entertainment Retailers Association.
“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 ERA. “That’s the first and only normal week for many years where vinyl albums have outsold digital albums, other than Record Store Day.”
Bayley said the figures refer to complete album downloads, rather than individual track downloads.
Digital downloads have been in decline in recent years, with the rise of music streaming services, many of which are free to consumers.
“I think there’s a lot of things going on in the market,” Bayley told WTOP.
“First, for many years we’ve been seeing this trend of people rediscovering vinyl and enjoying what vinyl has to offer,” said Bayley.
“On top of that, in the U.K. we’re seeing supermarkets, like Sainsbury’s and Tesco, go into the vinyl market, so they’re introducing a whole new age group of consumers and different consumers to the joys of vinyl,” she said.
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America reports vinyl album sales of $207 million for the first half of 2016, considerably less than album download sales of $500 million.
The time of year likely is playing a role in vinyl’s U.K. surge.
“This week we’re in the Christmas gifting period, and I think if you want to gift something to someone, giving them a lovely piece of vinyl is far more preferable than giving an intangible digital product,” Bayley said.
Vinyl costs considerably more than digital download.
The top seller on this week’s album charts in the U.K. is Kate Bush’s live album, “Before the Dawn. ” The four-record set sells for $52.76 on Amazon, while the music can be downloaded for $18.99.
Other albums in the top 10 include Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and the “Now That’s What I Call Christmas” compilation.
“What we’re really seeing at the moment is a multi-channel consumption of music,” said Bayley.
Even with renewed interest in vinyl, Bayley said the morphing manners of digital distribution remain the future of music, especially on mobile devices.
“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,” she said.
Yet vinyl has shown eight years of consecutive growth, according to ERA.
“It’s still 10 percent or less of the total albums market, if you include streamed albums, downloaded albums, CD albums, but it’s a significant niche now,” said Bayley. “If you go back 10 years it was [under] one percent of the market — it’s grown massively on the back of Record Store Day.”
