Stop us if you've heard this one before (actually, don't): Vinyl sales are hot. The trend continued in the United States during 2014 as The Wall Street Journal reports that sales for the format were up 49 percent from 2013-a huge, huge increase-translating to roughly 8 million vinyl records sold during 2014. No one with an ear to the music industry will be surprised to know that Jack White, one of the format's biggest promoters, is at the top of individual vinyl sellers as his Lazaretto sold nearly 76,000 copies.
That's far and beyond the sales numbers of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, which topped the vinyl charts during 2013 with 49,000 copies sold. Part of that is that White and his Third Man label released a number of excellent special editions, and part of it is strictly thanks to the increasing move toward vinyl as a whole. Lazaretto is the bestselling album on the format since Pearl Jam's Vitalogy from 1994.
The rest of the Top 5: The Arctic Monkeys and AM sold more than 40,000 copies, while NME reports that The Black Keys' Turn Blue, Lana Del Rey's Born To Die (not Ultraviolence) and Beck's Morning Phases each sold at least 25,000 copies.
As usual, we add the caveat: Vinyl sales increases are great but they aren't saving the music industry any time soon. The format still only makes up maybe 2 percent of all music sales, which makes investors unlikely to put money into new pressing plants anytime soon. That fact, combined with the increasing demand for vinyl, could create problems in the near future as "bottlenecks" form at existing plants, as reported by Consequence of Sound.
