Vinyl looks set to become a billion dollar industry.
Over the last year, sales of the format have reached a 25 year high, with David Bowie’s final album ‘Blackstar’ the highest-seller.
UK vinyl sales reached a high of 3.2million in 2016 – a massive increase of 53% from the previous year.
Now over the next couple of years it is likely to become a billon dollar industry with vinyl expected to generate between $800m and $900m in revenue in 2017 alone, according to Deloitte.
“Vinyl should account for almost a fifth of the sales of physical music products in 2017 and around 7 per cent of the $15bn that the global music industry is expected to take” they claim.
But Paul Lee, head of technology, media and telecoms research at the company, also predicted that before long there will eventually be a dip in vinyl sales.
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He told the Financial Times: “In 1981, over 1 billion albums were sold. In 2017 it will be around 40 million. This is not the resurgence that is portrayed. It is a blip.”
Lee argued that while hardcore music fans would continue to buy expensive vinyl reissues and deluxe re-pressings, less dedicated consumers buying records could fall away over the coming years.
Read more: the most beautiful vinyl releases of 2016
He cited a BBC poll that showed that almost half of the people that purchased a vinyl record had not played it within a month and that 7 per cent of them did not even own a turntable.
Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ recently sold more than double the number of copies of 2015’s biggest-seller, Adele’s ’25’.
Amy Winehouse had the second best selling release of 2016 with her final album ‘Back To Black’, while the ‘mixtape’ soundtrack for the movie Guardians Of The Galaxy came in third and Radiohead’s acclaimed, Mercury-nominated ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ was at Number Four. The rest of the top 10 was filled by ‘classic’ and legacy albums from the likes of Fleetwood Mac, The Stone Roses, The Beatles, Nirvana and the late Prince.