This year is set to be the biggest for vinyl sales in 30 years as Brits’ demand continues to grow.
Entertainment retail giant HMV has predicted that this year will be the most successful year for the format since the recent start of its revival, as major artists drive its popularity.
Ed Sheeran is poised to claim the best-selling vinyl album of the year with Divide while the former Oasis duo Liam and Noel Gallagher follow with their solo offerings in second and third place.
However, older land ess contemporary albums also appeared in the top 10. Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black beat Rag‘n’Bone Man to fifth place, for example.
In 2016 vinyl sales hit 3.2 million, rising 53 per cent on a year prior.
This year, according to the BPI, sales are on track to top 4 million marking the highest level of sales since the trade body’s records began in the 1990s.
This drove the first rise in physical music sales for a decade in the first six months of this year, up 2.5 per cent to £198 million, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association.
It has also seen HMV take a dominant position in driving the revival, with its vinyl sales accounting for roughly a third of the UK’s total, up 31 per cent on last year.
“A strong year for new releases from artists such as Ed Sheeran and Rag’n’Bone Man has been followed up with a really strong back end, with the Gallagher brothers driving the LP sales into the final quarter,” HMV’s music manager John Hirst said.
“Sales also continue to soar across our back catalogue, perhaps as people use streaming as a discovery tool alongside wanting to browse and collect physical music formats.”
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