
One day, kids who stream music might talk about digital downloads the same way that we talk about eight-track tapes, cassettes, and perhaps soon enough even CDs. But they could still be collecting records.
If you haven’t heard, vinyl is hot. LP sales shot up 32 percent from 2012 to 2013, even as overall sales of albums dropped. It was the format’s seventh straight year of growth. Digital album sales, meanwhile, dropped in 2013, the first time that has happened since Billboard started stracking them in 2001. CD sales declined last year by 14.5 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan, although they still make up the vast majority of album sales.
When it comes to recent growth, only one format comes to close to vinyl: streaming, which increased in volume by 24 percent in 2013, according to Nielsen Soundscan.
