RIAA Admits Vinyl Sales Are Climbing

(Updated)

By Eliot Van Buskirk April 28, 2008

Source: http://blog.wired.com

When I asked RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy last October whether the association was seeing a spike in vinyl record sales, he confounded my expectation. "Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," he said.

Indeed, the '05 to '06 numbers showed a decline in vinyl sales, but the association's new numbers confirm what we were driving at: vinyl records made a major comeback last year.

According to the RIAA's recently-released 2007 sales report, the American music industry sold 36.6 percent more Extended Play (EP) and Long Play (LP) records than it had in the previous year, increasing vinyl sales revenue by 46.2 percent. CD unit sales, on the other hand, declined 11.7 percent with revenue dropping 20.5 percent during the same period.

I gathered plenty of evidence for this story, and all of it pointed to a vinyl resurgence, which is why the RIAA's response didn't seem to make much sense at the time. Now, it's clear that its numbers just hadn't caught up to the trend. With this report, the vinyl resurgence has been officially acknowledged by the RIAA.