Vinyl sales have reached 1m units in the UK for 2014, the highest figure since 1996 – and are being driven primarily by heritage rock acts including Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.
The 2014 figure is another big leap on the previous year, when 780,000 vinyl records were sold. Factoring in the Christmas market, the sales could reach as high as 1.2m by the year’s end.
The biggest selling vinyl LP of 2014 is Arctic Monkeys’ AM, followed by Lazaretto by Jack White and The Endless River by Pink Floyd, which became the fastest-selling vinyl LP of the century with 6,000 first week sales. Jack White meanwhile shifted a record-breaking 40,000 copies of Lazaretto in his first week of US sales earlier this year, driven in part by innovations in the format such as hidden tracks and holograms.
The rest of the 2014 top 10 is similarly made up of Anglophone rock acts like Royal Blood and Oasis, while the bestsellers chart from November is the same, with David Bowie topping it above the likes of Status Quo, Temples and Bryan Ferry.
The chief executive of Official Charts, Martin Talbot, talked up the £20m revenues from vinyl this year, calling them “an incredible turnaround from barely £3m just five years ago” – though vinyl still only accounts for 2% of the overall music market in the UK.
Sales have perversely benefitted from the decline in popularity of physical music – as online streaming becomes the norm, eating into the download market, as well as still-declining CD sales, vinyl becomes an attractive format for object fetishists and committed fans.
Its sales are buoyed by the success of Record Store Day each April, which continues to grow as a focal point for vinyl purchase. This year’s sales were up 30% on 2013.
