We love vinyl, you love vinyl. This is nothing new. But for once a corporate entity is confirming what we’ve known to be true for a good long while now — Nielsen SoundScan reported that sales of LPs were up by 89 percent in 2008, from 990,000 in 2007 to 1.88 million. But since we already knew people loved vinyl, here’s bigger news: Neutral Milk Hotel landed in the top 10 best-selling LPs of 2008.
Maybe now we’ll be able to talk Neutral Milk Hotel into coming back from hiatus — the band’s 1998 sophomore LP In The Aeroplane Over the Sea moved 10,200 vinyl copies last year, tying for sixth with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. And yeah, we’ll admit it. That’s still a very (okay, very) small piece of the bigger music-sales puzzle — actually just .01 percent of the total music sales from CDs, digital downloads, LPs and ringtones combined — but you can’t deny that the analog sound is making a comeback.
Interestingly, sales of CDs, LPs and digital files did fall overall 14 percent in 2008, while digital album sales raked in $65.8 million, a huge 32 percent jump up from last year’s sales.
Other albums ranking in the top 10 included Radiohead’s In Rainbows at number one, Fleet Foxes’ self-titled release, Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy and, fairly inexplicably, the B-52s’ Funplex. Perhaps some people prefer their Rock Lobster on vinyl.
Related:
