Old Technology is Hot

I never gave up on vinyl and play records from my huge vinyl collection many days of the week. This shocking report will bring back a lot of fond memories for Americans who grew up with vinyl in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

For the first time since the iTunes Store launched in 2003, sales of digital tracks and albums declined last year, Billboard reports. Analysts blame the rise of streaming services like Spotify and Pandora. Sales of CDs also took a big hit, as did album sales overall.

Meanwhile, one format quietly posted huge gains: vinyl records. LP sales were up an amazing 32 percent from 2012, continuing an improbable growth trend that began in the early 1990s and took off around 2007. In fact, as The Oregonian‘s David Greenwald points out, this was the sixth straight year in which vinyl long-players have recorded their highest sales mark since the advent of Soundscan in 1991. The absolute numbers are still small: 6 million units, or about 2 percent of all album sales in the United States.