Vinyl Sales Are Breaking Records This Year

Vinyl has been doing well in 2018. Very well.

This year, Record Store Day had its best year ever, with retailers selling 733,000 LPs during the week (April 20-26), an all-time high for Record Store Day week, according to Nielsen Music sales data. In total, 799,000 albums in all formats sold at independent record stores, the highest non-holiday week sales total in the U.S. since July 2005. 

Vinyl sales increased by 19.2% by July of 2018 alone, according to a mid-year report released by Nielsen Music, and it’s anticipated that over 10 million vinyl albums will be sold by the end of 2018 according to a Digital Music News report.

And it doesn’t seem like the trend is a fluke, as two new record stores opened up in London last weekend.

Online independent music store Bleep, operating since 2004, opened a pop-up store that is the physical embodiment of what they have been creating online for the last 14 years. The 1,200-square-foot space, situated in the heart of Dalston in East London, will offer an “extensive range of vinyl and other items,” such as books and prints, according to the website’s statement. The store will operate between November through February and is slated to host a slew of DJs and takeovers from various artists and collectives.

The record store World Of Echo, which gets its name from Arthur Russell’s 1986 album, opened up in East London on November 10. Run by Stephen Pietrzykowski and Natalie Judge, the shop will stock “new, used and rare” vinyl, with the owners telling Resident Advisor they plan on gravitating towards genres they identify with the most. Those include early electronic music, krautrock, noise, EBM, punk, post-punk, industrial, jazz, art rock, and DIY, Pietrzykowski told Resident Advisor.