The triumph of vinyl: Vintage is back as LP sales continue to skyrocket

Adobe Stock Photo by Josh Greenberg, Carleton University Previously relegated to the dustbin of media history, the vinyl LP has undergone a revival during the past decade to once again become the best selling physical format for recorded music today. Where barely one million new vinyl albums were sold in the United States in 2006, that figure has grown every year since, soaring to just over 49 million units in 2023. One in every 15 vinyl albums sold last year — approximately seven per cent of all sales (more than three million units) — were by Taylor Swift. This is a global media comeback story. It is so significant the BBC recently reported that after a 30-year absence Britain’s Office of National Statistics has placed vinyl records back into the basket of goods it uses for tracking consumer pricing and measuring inflation. Sales of vinyl records continued to increase in 2023 – decades after the LP’s death was forecast by music experts.& (AP Photo/Aaron Doster) How is it that a media format as clunky, costly and fragile as vinyl would become so popular in an age of ubiquitous digital content? How is it that of all forms of recorded music,...