My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: @Statista projecting Vinyl Records to breach 7 million Sold due to Renaissance by Hipsters

Monday, December 8, 2014

@Statista projecting Vinyl Records to breach 7 million Sold due to Renaissance by Hipsters


That and Bell-foot or Bell-Bottom pants, a trend blamed on the latest Trendsetters from America and Britain to infect Jamaicans; Hipsters. See the video below for an explanation.


Now it's Vinyl Records, which are selling like crazy on BOTH sides of the Atlantic as noted in the article “Analog Trends: Vinyl Record sales on pace to exceed 7 million, but at what cost?”, published December 3, 2014 By Keith Nelson Jr, DigitalTrends.

Good to note the more modern equivalent of Vinyl Records, Physical Digital Music Purchases i.e. CD's DVD's, is still on the decline as Streaming is raking in the big bucks and is on course to make US$1 billion for the Music Industry Moguls as noted in my blog article entitled “RIAA Stats on Music Streaming – Why 4G LTE and Cheaper Cloud Storage means downloads extinct”.


On the American side of the Atlantic, the Stats according to analyst Statista for Vinyl Record Sales from 1993 to 2014 are quite compelling:

1.      6 million Vinyl Albums sold in 2013
2.      4 million Vinyl Albums sold in the first six months of 2014

At this rate, sales of Vinyl will easily reach over 7 million before the end of 2014.The graph below from Statista illustrates this clearly.



After perusing the Graph above, the following can also be concluded:

1.      Vinyl Album sales stayed below 2 million units from 1993 to 2008
2.      Vinyl Album sales have exceeded 2.5 million units since 2009

Then around 2011, two (2) years later, Album sales began to rise by 1% as I'd noticed in my blog article entitled “Nielsen Soundscan 1% Rise in Music Album Sales - Greg Sandoval's FireStarter”.

Could it have been because of the upward trajectory of Vinyl Albums which began in 2009 but whose sustained effects weren’t felt until 2011?

Vinyl Records to breach 7 million Sold – Boom time for Vinyl Record Pressing Companies

Maybe. But my focus is on the here and now.

The stars of this renewed boom in Vinyl Album sales are a noteworthy bunch led by the venerable Third Man Records founder, Jack White. In less than 7 days, White’s Lazaretto Album, released on Tuesday June 10th 2014, sold more than forty thousand (40,000) copies.

In less than two (2) months,  it sold over sixty thousand (60,000) copies with skyrocketing sales of over one hundred thousand (100,000) copies as noted in the article “Pressing plants feel the strain with Vinyl Records back in the groove”, published September 26 2014 By Mark Guarino, The Washington Post.



This beats out Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy‘s 20-year Record for most Vinyl LPs sold in one calendar year!

Globally, they're No. 2 in terms of sales of Records based on the article “Sales of music on Vinyl hit 18-year high”, published  Thursday 27 November 2014 19.16 GMT by  Alexandra Topping, The UK Guardian as the trend is also huge in United Kingdom:

1.      Arctic Monkeys’ AM
2.      Jack White’s Lazaretto
3.      Pink Floyd's The Endless River

Third Man Records thus contracted the services of United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tennessee to make their Vinyl Records for them. Since May 2014, they’re not stopped pressing Records.

In fact, United Record Pressing, which has been in operation since 1949, sunk an additional US$5.5 million to host an additional 16 Record Presses in a new building to add to their 22 already running 24 hours a day, six days a week to produce some forty thousand (40,000) Records per day.



According to Bob Roczynski, president of Record Products of America, a 38-year-old company in Hamden, Connecticut, that'll wear them down twice as fast. But as long as the money keeps coming, the few active Vinyl Record Pressing companies that exist are determined to ride out this trend, retooling, retraining and re-hiring old hands to keep pressing Records to satisfy this strange surge of interest in Vinyl Records.

Vinyl Record Pressing Renaissance - Newfound love for owning all things Luddite

Those 6 million Vinyl Albums sold in 2013 have netted sales of US$218 million. With the year drawing to a close and sales set to surpass 7 million units, there not telling how much of the US$898 billion in sales from Physical Digital Music Purchases i.e. CD's DVD's, may have actually been Vinyl Albums.

So will this trend continue into 2015? The Vinyl Record Pressing companies certainly hope so!

Polaroid Cameras and now Flip phone Cellphones due to Celebrity Privacy concerns as stated in my blog article entitled “Celebrities Return of the Flip Phones - Flip-Force Awakening Thanks to Fappening Herald Smaller Smartphones and Smartwatch phones”.




Everybody is slowly becoming hipster, sporting their skinny jeans and a Newfound love for owning all things Luddite, Vinyl record included as noted in the article “Vinyl record sales hit 18-year high”, published 27 November 2014 By Dave Lee, Technology reporter, BBC News.

Vinyl Record Pressing companies may be feeling the strain but are singing the Sweet song of Profitability and renewed vitality as Vinyl Records are Growing Strong towards 205, the Year the Sheep, thanks to a Hipster groove!




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