The digital gyration is in full golf stroke , but music lover around the world still apprize the dish of the B - side . AsNMEreports , vinyl sales in the UK eclipsed digital record album downloads last hebdomad for the first time in account , according to data point furnish by theEntertainment Retailers Association(ERA ) .
The ERA — a UK trade organization representing retail merchant who sell physical and digital entertainment products — state that in Week 48 of 2016 ( that ’s Monday , November 28 through Sunday , December 4 ) , purchasers spent £ 2.4 million on vinyl . During the same sentence duad , only £ 2.1 million was spend on digital album downloads .
These numbers illustrate a satisfying duty period in buy patterns from the same period last yr , when audiophiles only spent £ 1.2 million on vinyl record album but shelled out £ 4.4 million on music downloads . euphony lovers often prefer vinyl group albums for their ranking sound quality , but the question remains : Why are record sales exploding , peculiarly when digital downloading platforms are now so ubiquitous ?
The ERA attributes the phenomenon to constituent includingRecord Store Day fateful Friday(a new disc sales promotional event held the day after Thanksgiving , modeled on the popularRecord Store Dayholiday ) , along with the increasing amount of retailers — graze from music stores to supermarkets — that now sell book . In short , vinyl recordsare voguish again . Also , the BBC sharpen out , album downloads have go down since streaming services ( like Spotify and Pandora ) have become more pop .
" This is yet further evidence of the power of music sports fan to surprise us all , " enjoin ERA chief Kim Bayley in a affirmation ( quote by the BBC ) . " It ’s not so long ago that the digital download was meant to be the futurity . Few would have predicted that an record album format , first manufacture in 1948 and based on stamp a rut into a piece of plastic , would now be outsell it in 2016 . "
[ h / tNME ]
