Here’s what the vinyl records ‘comeback’ looks like, dating back to 1973 (and updated for 2015). US-based data compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
And here’s a breakdown of sales, by year.
Combined LPs + 33″ singles.
1973: $1.436 billion
1974: $1.550 billion
1975: $1.697 billion
1976: $1.908 billion
1977: $2.440 billion
1978: $2.733 billion
1979: $2.411 billion
1980: $2.450 billion
1981: $2.598 billion
1982: $2.208 billion
1983: $1.958 billion
1984: $1.848 billion
1985: $1.562 billion
1986: $1.211 billion
1987: $996.4 million
1988: $712.6 million
1989: $336.7 million
1990: $180.9 million
1991: $93.3 million
1992: $79.9 million
1993: $61.8 million
1994: $65.0 million
1995: $71.8 million
1996: $84.3 million
1997: $68.9 million
1998: $59.7 million
1999: $59.7 million
2000: $54.0 million
2001: $58.8 million
2002: $45.4 million
2003: $43.2 million
2004: $39.2 million
2005: $27.4 million
2006: $25.6 million
2007: $26.9 milion
2008: $59.6 million
2009: $66.3 million
2010: $91.2 million
2011: $124.0 million
2012: $165.4 million
2013: $213.7 million
2014: $320.8 million
2015: $422.3 million
As for 2016, that data is still rolling in. We’re hearing different information on how strong the growth has been this year. That said, growth could start to seriously jumpstart, thanks to a surge in innovation in this space. That includes work on an ‘HD Vinyl‘ format, and unexpected ideas like the MAG_LEV magnetically hovering turntable.
Yes, the likelihood that vinyl sales will ever grow beyond, say, 1987 levels seems pretty low. But every little bit helps, particularly for musicians trying to make a living at the 250-700 capacity club level, who depend on direct sales at shows to make the whole thing work. Losing those CD sales has been a big hit for these folks. So the renewed interested in vinyl gives them another something to sell with relatively high margins (although not as high as CDs).
So the question isn’t just how many total vinyl units are being sold. It’s how are those units being distributed across the range of musicians selling them. For some musicians, the revenue gained from 500 vinyl sales on tour may be the difference between having a tour in the red or in the black. For a larger artist, it’s going to be a rounding error. But just because it’s a rounding error for the larger artist, that doesn’t mean that the resurgence of vinyl isn’t an important development for many other folks, even if total sales never grow beyond 1987 levels.
Yea, pretty much this. It’s not really the huge deal people continue to make of it, it’s just a nice curiosity in an industry of bad news. It’s great for (some) bands/people that like to buy vinyl. It’s not going to become some major form of consumption, though.
On the other side of the argument, people calling it a fad or whatever need to chill out. Who cares? It’s a fad that makes some money.
they should learn how to market and push merch, records are cool, but what about an usb the can be used to rebuild the racks? and t shirts last forever. 4$ to print 20+ to buy. i think records are promoting elitism in electronic music. use what tools work the best for you, not whats trendy or cool.
I hope you aren’t insinuating that elitism is bad, as it helps maintain a certain level of quality throughout the scene.
exactly ..also for many its not that its “cool” now, but we never stopped listening to vinyl, because we like the quality and surface noise. the whole process of listening to records is much more interesting. can’t tell you how offten i was on an afterhour with friends going through record collections and listening to old favorite tracks of everyone. with mp3 you just load a playlist and its done, same with a cd.. with a vinyl you have much more interaction with the music. of course the “normal” music listener won’t understand, but elitists do. its a good thing to be elitist in certain cases, because you develope your own taste rather than just following the masses whats trendy now and then move to the next genre..go listen to your EDM crap on cd and stfu..
People keep using the word quality in regards to vinyl, even though all the professionals (audio and mastering engineers) are pretty unanimous that digital has a much higher fidelity. I think the word you’re looking for when describing vinyl is character or flavor. http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl-5352162
you don’t see any milkmen coming around delivering milk anymore do you? probably many a working man happy about that! lol
Vinyl is more like that person who is grandfathered in to drive horse pulled carriages around the city, for all intent purposes should be dead, but still kicking around just because its that cool and important.
While the chart appears to make its comeback look meager and unimportant, its actually incredible. Vinyl and its whole creation, of recording and sound, spurned many a thing and a whole damn industry in and of itself, so its an incredible invention and one likely to remain around for a long long time and not just some romantic resurgence by hipsters or whatever it is…
Think of the first person that actually thought of and invented that thing, who the heck ever figured out how to do all that stuff, its mind blowing when you really think about it and try and pull yourself back into their shoes, its incredible stuff that we just toss aside as rudimentary…
You mean Benjamin Franklin?
Ben Franklin invented the phonophone?
um it was invented almost 100 years after Franklin by some guy named Thomas Edison… 🙂
I’m glad you mentioned Edison! It was by far his favorite invention too!
No, I remember the story from elementary school…Benjamin Franklin went outside during a thunderstorm, flew a kite with a key tied to the string and BAM…the record player was invented.
i see milkmen every day, they deliver the milk to my work
(UK)
I deliver newspapers, milk men are delivering at the same time. You don’t see them because they get up at 2 am to not disturb traffic.
https://www.oberweis.com/
no, I see Amazon delivering everyithing.
It’s “Intents AND purposes”
In many ways this is actually the most misleading commentary on the vinyl comeback that I’ve seen, as far as charts go.
I can go to Criminal Records & I can spend $100… $40 on the deluxe rerelease of the Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies & $60 on 4 used Freddy King lps. And 1 out of 5 of those records is reflected in your graph. I could then go to the Caledonia Lounge & watch some indie band play & I could buy some self-released 45 & that’s not going to be reflected in this chart, either. I would venture to say that maybe 10% of the hundreds & hundreds & hundreds of records I’ve bought over the last 8 or 10 so years would actually appear in this chart.
Just last night I broke the seal on a Tanya Tucker’s Greatest Hits that had been sitting unopened since 1978. I bought it at a used record shop, but it’s a new record… for me the experience is no different than opening the stack of Fat Possum’s Hi Records re-issues that came in the mail a month ago, except that those would be reflected in this chart & Tanya Tucker wouldn’t.
To show what the vinyl comeback REALLY looks like, you have to consult the pressing plants & the shops selling used & vintage vinyl. (Of course there’s no way to quantify the yard sales & thrift shops where some of the best finds happen, but at least some acknowledgement of that would have to play into a true representation of what the comeback looks like.)
What you’re doing is plotting sales of a very small subset of the actual vinyl comeback.
This is true, but used sales have no bearing on the current music industry.
Used vinyl sales don’t have an impact on the RIAA, but they do have an impact on the music industry. But that’s only half of my point… if you asked the RIAA, cassette tape sales are non-existent because they happen outside of the sales that they track. So they’re just simply not the people to ask about these indie-focused formats, or at least they’re only a part of the picture.
If you want to make the statement that indie record stores, indie artists (many of whom subsist largely on vinyl sales), & the fan experience aren’t a part of the real picture, then sure, Paul’s right on the money. But I would disagree on all 3 points.
Moreover, I got into vinyl because of the low buy in, the novelty, & the fun of flipping through crates. I can think of just 2 new records (David Vandervelde’s Moonstation House Band & the Elected’s Sun Sun Sun, still two of my very favorite records) that I bought during my first few years of collecting. It wasn’t until I invested in some nicer stereo equipment & it became my preferred listening format that I began to regularly buy new releases. So it could be that the health of the used market is a solid indicator of future sales of new, even RIAA-tracked records, in which case it is an essential piece of what the vinyl comeback *really* looks like.
The reality is this… according to the RIAA, Urban Outfitters might be some vinyl selling powerhouse. But I doubt there’s a single market where Urban Outfitters is moving more vinyl than the local record shop (supposing a decent record shop exists in that market). I’ll bet there are probably even venues in those markets where more vinyl is purchased than at the local Urban Outfitters. RIAA might not have that data, but that’s what the vinyl comeback *really* looks like.
I think you’re missing the point. Used record sales existed when records were the dominant medium too, that never went away. It really has nothing to do with this discussion.
I would suspect that majority of vinyl sales back then accounted mostly from new record sales, because 33rpm was relatively a new format then. Now, used records from these days take the majority of the market.
…and “Muswell Hillbillies” is an AWESOME record, btw 😉
Not entirely true: To the extent that used sales help to keep hard product music retailers in business, the volume of these sales do have an ongoing impact on the music business as a whole, just as they do in the book business.
Or are hard product retailers now irrelevant to the music business as well? I would submit that while they are less relevant than in the past, they still have a role to play, as they help to keep the most energized and passionate music consumers connected to that endeavor.
New Vinyl is the same. It doesn’t need to be the only game, because the hard product sector is smaller. But it seems to me that the music ecosystem will be healthier in the long run if physical retail and hard product are a part of it it, even if that part is less than 15% of the whole.
Not to pick nits, but those used items were counted when they were initially distributed.
I understand what you are saying, but used goods are never counted, so the perspective/context remains valid as it is counting sales of new goods just as it always did.
Sure, that’s why I’m saying the RIAA doesn’t have the whole picture.
Paul seems to be saying, “This isn’t as big a deal as everyone’s making it.” And I’m saying, “Well it’s bigger than that because of indie new releases that aren’t soundscanned. But also the used market points towards a very significant market that consumers are invested in, & these used sales will eventually translate into increased new vinyl sales, as we’ve been seeing.”
I mean, clearly Target didn’t start selling Crosley turntables so that people could play new vinyl, the new vinyl sales came & will continue to come after.
You just can’t make an informed comment on the vinyl resurgence without considering non-soundscanned indie releases (obviously), but also the used market.
These are RIAA figures, probably based off Soundscan; which means a LOT of vinyl is not being accounted for (indies, self-released, etc.). Yes, it’s a small percentage, but according to another DMN figure last week paid streaming subscriptions are about the same percentage…
Exactly. I along with a lot of my friends and peers spend a hell of a lot of money buying records released by independent labels that on the most part release electronic/dance floor-intended stuff. In London for example I reckon that makes up a huge percentage of the number of people buying records. So not those people that tend to go out on RSD to buy a few 12″ versions of albums by bands they’d loved for years, but people that keep their ears close to the ground for new stuff or old represses (most of which probably isn’t represented in these figures) . This is quite a large community as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it would make some impact on the figures.
Thank you Paul, Fake antique hoopla in music, WOW!
Nice hobby for many, little money for music and musicians. Let’s connnnnvvvert Radio and streaming to discovery based music store. Simple project leading to $100B music industry by 2020 with no losers at sight!
This is ridiculous. Old modes of production are almost always embedded inside of new ones (See e.g., Fredic Jameson and Raymond Williams). Just because digital is rapidly achieving cultural and economic dominance, that doesn’t mean that things like vinyl don’t have a role to play as well. At the end of the day, it’s another thing to sell and another thing for people to buy.
Net present value of a physical sale is very different than a stream. For bootstrapping indie musicians, they need more stuff to sell right now with higher margins. Even if streaming nets them more over 20 years than physical sales do, it doesn’t matter. Right now, physical sales are more valuable, because that’s immediate cash flow that can be used to keep a project moving forward (e.g., making it possible to stay on tour). Without it, you can achieve the volume that would make things like streaming more valuable, both in the near term and over the long run.
I’m not talking about million selling artists here. I’m talking about people who were selling say 7k-40k CDs/downloads before the bottom fell out. Many of those people had carved out at least a subsistence living on those sales, merch, live, an occasional license, etc.
After the collapse of CDs (and then downloads), many of those people saw their sales/downloads cut in half and they’ve been struggling to find other income sources to replace it. Vinyl isn’t a miracle cure. Indeed, it’s more expensive than CDs, harder to deal with, more expensive to ship, etc. But it seems to be something that people are increasingly interested in buying, especially the kind of people who go out to see shows by the sorts of bands I’m talking about. It’s another thing to have at the merch table.
When one of these kinds of bands sells 1000 LPs, it’s doesn’t look like much in the scheme of the entire music industry. But in terms of the personal economy of the sort of band I’m talking about, it can be significant. That’s why this sector doesn’t need to grow to 1970s levels to be a small but significant part of a healthy music business ecosystem.
I saw Chuck Prophet the other night in 400 capacity room. Sold out show. $15 ticket. 5 piece band. One opener. Great artist. Been at it a long time. Still seems to be able to make a living. He had both CDs and vinyl on his merch table. Vinyl was $20. I bet at least $10 of each sale went immediately in the pocket of he and his band (and probably more). That’s a lot of streams in that one sale. And that’s money right now. If you’re a dude like him, I bet that immediate cash flow is never irrelevant. If you don’t have enough it, you can’t continue to operate. Merch is immediate cash money. It’s net present value is right now. Streaming is always later.
Taylor Swift doesn’t need people buying things like vinyl. At least right now, people like Chuck Prophet are better off when people are, because in the near term, streaming alone isn’t going to get it done for them; it just doesn’t offer the immediate cash flow of merch table physical sales.
Well said. The streaming debate has never been simply about convenience and accessability, as Mr. Parker sees the music business, but rather survival for the working artists whose work merits compensation.
The y axis has to be mislabeled. With 9 million LPs sold this past year, the sales would have to be over $100 million.
It is in millions of UNITS sold, not millions of dollars revenue!
This chart does not tell the complete picture, though. The majority of vinyl sales today are of USED albums/singles; which this chart does not take into account. So, the true vinyl sales bar graph would show a much greater explosion today if it included this data (used record shops, garage sales, craigslist/ebay/discogs, etc…)
My thoughts exactly
Thus lies the difference between art and mass production…
You might double check the labeling of this chart. The figures shown here appear to be the sales volumes in units, but for some reason are labeled as dollars. It also says this is adjusted for inflation, but the sales volumes are not adjusted for inflation in RIAA data, only the dollar values are. The original data can be found here: https://www.riaa.com/keystatistics.php?content_selector=riaa-shipment-database-log-in
Thank you!
Joshua Friedlander, VP Strategic Data Analysis, RIAA
Josh, thanks, yes I think I meshed units and dollars, when this is all units. Check the corrected graph above, and thanks for making that correction.
Absurd. Comparing 1973 to, say, 2013, ignores the fact that it 1973 vinyl was essentially the only medium in which to purchase music.
Yes, this is the important point. In 1973, (and in the previous decades) there was only one way to buy music: At the record store. If the chart shows something shy of 300 million units being sold in the early 70’s; that represented practically the entire business.
What exactly is “absurd” about it? The information you give doesn’t change anything as to the purpose of the chart, which is not to show that the music sales in general have declined, but that vinyl sales have declined (and that its “comeback” is not that big).
That in 1973 vivyl was the only game in town, it’s well known. Doesn’t change the fact that now, when it’s one medium among many, it moves very few units.
I think it would be fairer to make a graphic which shows the percentages per carrier of the total sales. Plus, don’t forget that there still is a pretty sizeable 2nd hand records industry beneath all this which also sells a lot of records and is a good ground for the new vinyl fad to grow on.
I am not sure if vinyl will stay, but I think there’s a 50% chance it will.
CD sales have dropped by two-thirds since their height in 1997 making vinyl all the more attractive as it is now the only tangible representation of a musician’s art where sales have at least stayed flat or risen.
What this graph doesn’t show is that streamed music sounds like shit. And that paid digital downloads have declined.
One word for you: Tidal.
If it still sounds like shit you sir need better gear.
Think before you comment and google is your friend.
I didn’t want to troll, but I had to do it.
Back to normal broadcast.
The majority of people who stream Tidal do so through their mobile phone where the DAC inside is pure garbage. In order for Tidal to sound as good as a CD, you’d need to know what you’re doing and buy good equipment.
Paul, you are missing the point. It is an old technology that has come back for music lovers. Currently, music lovers have total access to everything – for relatively little or nothing in terms of cost. Think of it like porn if you want. It’s everywhere. Vinyl is the burlesque show of the recorded music business. It costs money to get in, the technology is old (I just mastered a vinyl album on a machine who’s original components were built in 1935 – it was ‘modernized in 1962, 1968 and the electronics were redone in 1984) the cutting lathe electronics run so hot on these machines that they must be cooled by helium and they audio distortion is real (and wonderful) and the frequency range is reduced compared to CD. But it is a ritual. It is a show. It’s not the ‘money shot” of porn it is the tease of a little here a little there. The local independent record store here in Denver Twist & Shout is in business BECAUSE of vinyl – they cannot keep turntables on the shelves and 75% of my students in my music business classes have records and turntables. How long will it last? It really doesn’t matter. Will it ever come back to 1985 levels when CDs really came in, no. But music LOVERS a feeling engaged in ways they have not been in almost 10 years. That is the point.
All good points, Chris. But what point exactly do you think I was making here?
Hey Paul,
Thought the point you made was that vinyl was not a financial player in the game yet – I may have mistaken your intentions – sorry if I did — if that was your point – it’s true – it’s not a big dollar number in the record business compared other delivery systems or to what it was in the 70s – but what I know from bands like Leftover Salmon, what I have researched for my teaching and my own band is that vinyl has completely revitalized merch sales of “hard goods” – CDs were a drug on the market – now a vinyl/CD/download card package (bundle) can go for $30 and the overhead is about $10 — which gives the touring artist about $20 a pop — and the funny part is that I believe about 30% of buyers at shows don’t have a turntable (I think that was from a DMN article about 2 years ago)…so sorry if I mistook your meaning.
They should show all different formats rise and fall. It would be interesting to see how much music sales there these days. To compare the music sales of the different decades, and the tape, cd, mp3, vinyl sales each year as well.
You could see the sink of music purchases in the last fifty years
then
the rise and fall of the different formats
still the best sale of the last 25 years. Put the cd sale just beside for fun.
Do these sales include second hand sales? I see people buying old resold records from places like Thrift Stores all the time.
It’s no coincidence that the 5 years of greatest LP sales were during my 4 years of high school and the year after, 1976 thru 1980.
Still have over 1100 albums in several wooden crates (originally used to ship cantaloupes) stacked in my basement. About 1050 of those were purchased before 1980. Love to crank up the turntables now and again
Stay off of my lawn!
Someone may have pointed it out, but don’t forget the mafia corporate douchebags in industry who colluded to overprice CDs and shut down LP production in the early 1990s so they could become obscenely rich.
Actually, I think price-fixing is an excellent idea, and would prevent the “big-box” stores from treating music as a loss-leader. A similar policy could be implemented for the digital age to prevent lowball pricing by digital stores and streaming services, but presumably US laws on price-fixing would have to change.
France, for example, allows minimum price setting (that is, price fixing) for e-books, which follows the similar policy which France has for physical books.
“France’s national assembly has passed a bill (full passage here) which would allow publishers to effectively fix the minimum price of e-books, just as printed books, sold there – a move seemingly designed to maintain publishers’ income as the industry moves toward an environment in which many books are sold very cheaply as e-books.”
I am all for such laws in the US. The market is not always right, and these sorts of laws offer one possible corrective, in concert with strong anti-piracy enforcement.
Seems to me that there are a lot of money obsessed cynics out there who want vinyl to fail. Of course, vinyl today is nowhere near it was in the late 70s. It’s silly to compare. The point about vinyl now making a comeback amongst MUSIC LOVERS, is that it’s become an artistically vibrant niche. It’s a reaction to the invisible, lo-fi, screen-based marketplace of iTunes, Spotify and YouTube. It’s a real community.
Music business history has always been forged by energy on the fringes. Every major genre began as some tiny, homespun event. The question then is not about how many units today, but the quality of the music being produced. What we are talking about here is indies and record collectors – and, I would imagine, an older generation handing down this love for warm sound and large sleeves to a younger generation of music lover. I wouldn’t be surprised if this vinyl underground produced the next world-changing indie record labels. Never underestimate the power of passion, community and quality in forging music fashions.
And anyway, who knows what tomorrow’s teenagers will want? Just because today’s twenty-somethings (born in the corporate, glitzy, boysbandy 90s) seem to consider music as a cheap, consumable entity they don’t need to own, doesn’t mean that kids born in the 2000s (who grew up in a recession) will have the same desires, values or youth culture. The only clue we have is Frozen. Note how today’s 4-10 yr olds (tomorrow’s market) went NUTS about this Broadway soundtrack. No EDM for this generation! Expect surprises over the next 10 years. And hats off to the vinyl community for keeping true love alive!
Fantastic post Garath !
I would say the biggest issue I see is the majors lack of marketing push behind, so many programs and visibility marketing campaigns could be developed that put key catalogs and re-issues front and center in indi’s…. let’s just press and sell em seems to be the motto or is it just a lack of marketing creativity?
Most of the equipment to make new vinyl is still working and I hear that some places working 24/7 can not keep up with orders. Keep in mind things happen in cycles and that even though we may never hit the real big numbers, the increase is not so far fetched as the market is showing. New people getting tired of the garbage digital offering are coming back to analog in large numbers- I get calls about it all the time and I don’t even work on tables but just tape decks and I am overloaded with work.
A decent engineering shop can make a turntable but couldn’t make a CD (or other laser disc) p,layer.
Therefore as CD players disappear there will be nothing to play the discs on over time.
Now is the time to consider the future of all those CDs…
Players will be around for years to come, there will always be someone that fixes or makes new ones.
Cause you cant play a CD in your car or on a computer disc drive?…
Exactly my point that I’ve been saying for years now. Most people forget that when lp’s ‘disappeared’ in the 90’s, a lot of mint and rare hard to find pressings are now going for hundreds of dollars. As CD manufacturing declines, the rare limited CD pressings around today will command hundreds of dollars in the near future. So all those that are poo-pooing CDs as junk and throwing them out because you have ‘no room in your cluttered 2 room apartment you are overpaying for now, you will lose out on the revival that most assuredly will happen. Coil CDs are the perfect example, with the band now gone, their back catalog of limited pressings are now going for a small fortune and people are paying the inflated prices because they are no other alternatives.
As far as the new vinyl revival goes, I’m all for it and have always bought vinyl even when most people didn’t, I never stopped. Likewise I still buy CDs since a lot of independent experimental artists cannot afford to press vinyl today and MP3’s sound like crap. The trend will get worse when the manufacturers become overburdened with orders to press the bigger labels vinyl output, they will concentrate on the bigger orders and leave the indies for last. This is already happening and turnaround times are 4 to 5 months out now for the indies. Not so for the big labels like Blue Note and Columbia, who get first dibs since the are pressing 1,000’s of units, not 100 or 300 or 500 like most indies. So for all those that think what’s going on is the status quo, think again. A lot of artists don’t have the cash to put out anything today. You can thank Napster and the whole generation of luddites that grew up thinking everything was free and for the taking. The bottom line is support artists any way you can, since pretty soon a lot of them will just give up and not bother putting out music anymore. Streaming has proven to be a slap in the face to musicians rights and is just a cash grab for the corporate pigs. You might think it’s cool to listen to music for free like the old radio days and think that musicians are getting well paid for the wares, but back in the day, if you liked something on the radio, YOU WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE RECORD OR CD, YOU DIDN’T GO INTO A STORE AND STEAL IT.
Yeah but does anyone keep track of vinyl re-sales?
I know the owner of a USED record shop and he says his sales of USED vinyl has
also greatly risen in the last 5 to 6 years, Is anyone taking that into account?
The thing to remember about used sales is that for every used record purchased, one was abandoned, in a sense.
Also, in the current short term, there is a glut of abandoned vinyl, just as there is of old hifi gear.
And as someone pointed out, used vinyl sales only support one part of the industry – the stores selling it. Not that that is a bad thing, but it doesn’t send dime one to musicians, and it doesn’t cause any investment in production facilities. I suppose it sells some turntables…
I am an “indie” band and we self-release our albums. We have released 7 albums in the past 12 years. the first 5 albums were released on CD only. the last 2 albums (since 2012) have ONLY BEEN RELEASED ON VINYL. That’s all we manufacture now, not because vinyl is ‘trendy’ but because CD’s are redundant. Vinyl albums are the only relevant physical medium left for delivering music, otherwise, just download it.
I would love to see that number in comparison to CD purchases and digital purchases.
What I find most “fascinating” is that this “fad” (as so many people like to call it) is growing inspite of the fact that there is NO “retail” system supporting it…….The few record stores that exist are most all “used or vintage” and yet, new vinyl continues to grow (ignoring the massive turnover of used vinyl)…..In BUSINESS 101, what would this be telling you?….Isn’t the “MARKET” speaking loud enough for anyone to hear????
The “lemming” mentality that seems to permeate the record/music industry now more than ever is chasing after new streaming services, which are and will fail monumentally and ‘morph” into the next group of industry standards, just as new technologies have so many times before…..The biggest mistake I see most “industry pendents” making is the total ignorance of and ignoring of “HUMAN NATURE” – which has remained “unchanged” since the very beginning (and thats well before the iphone and computer…LOL ! ) !
I like shellac 78s on my wind-up HMV gramophone – no newfangled electricity contaminating the pure analogue motor, and at 78rpm, you get much more sound per second fitting into the cut! but for the true connoisseur, nothing can beat the ghostly warble of an Edison wax cylinder rig!
In 1976 most households had a record player. Vinyl was the only format apart from the compact disc. The vinyl boom ist a quality-boom. Kids and audiophiles want to play records, want to touch the music with their hands. Facts and figures cannot explain the excitement.
Why does it end in 2014?
Oh, never mind- this is old news.