Go retro and experience the warm, rich sound of LPs

By PRESTON JONES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News


Times are tough for traditional media. Yet against all odds, a cumbersome, fussy and pricey method of consuming recorded music isn't just surviving – it's thriving.

Vinyl LPs, as has been breathlessly touted for months, are surprisingly resurgent in the midst of this analog twilight and the ascent of portable, digital technology.

Looking at the most complete data available, for 2008, the sales of vinyl LPs jumped an eye-popping 89 percent, from 990,000 units to 1.88 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan's year-end report.

The top-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's In Rainbows, which moved more than 25,000 copies. Nothing to sneeze at but, by comparison, the top-selling nonvinyl album of the year, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, sold nearly 3 million.

LPs were less than 1 percent of the year's total music sales, but they nevertheless offer a flicker of hope – or a brief delay of the inevitable – for an industry that has seen nothing but bad news for years. Indeed, according to Nielsen SoundScan, vinyl LP sales are on course to top out at a record-setting 2.8 million units in 2009, a 50 percent increase from 2008's total.

"People are truly embracing the warmth of the sound," says Chris Penn, manager of Dallas' Good Records.

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