Vinyl records making a comeback

TORONTO - A music-buying public enamoured with digital downloads may be abandoning the compact disc in droves, but one physical medium is staging a tiny comeback.

Amid otherwise gloomy music sales numbers released by Nielsen Co. this week, vinyl record sales doubled compared with the year before.

The number of long-play vinyl records sold in the United States rose to 1.88 million units, compared with 990,000 the year before.

While vinyl records represent just a fraction of total music sales, their resurgence could not come at a better time for another under-fire segment of the music industry, the independent record store.

Nielsen said almost two-thirds of the vinyl albums sold last year were from independent shops.

Harmik Grigorian, co-owner of L'Atelier Grigorian music store in Toronto's trendy Yorkville district, said he plans to begin selling new vinyl releases next year because more and more people are coming in asking for them.

"A lot of people are coming in looking to buy or experiment," said Mr. Grigorian. "And now you can see a lot of hardware stores are selling affordable turntables."

Smaller, independent shops are being squeezed by competition from digital music sales and big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart.

Higher sales of vinyl products buck a trend in the music industry, with major labels trying to combat shifting consumption patterns on the part of consumers.

However, an uptick in vinyl record sales will not save labels such as Universal Music Group from the precipitous decline in the sale of compact discs, by far their main money maker. CD sales fell almost 20% last year.

Over the important holiday period, album sales in all formats were down almost 20%.

Last year, sales of digital albums rose 32% to 66 million units from 50 million in 2007. Over the same period, CD sales fell almost 20% to 361 million units from 450 million, Nielsen said.

Figures for Canada will be released later this month, a spokesperson for Soundscan Canada said Friday.

Artists such as Madonna, U2 and R.E.M. have opted to release their latest albums in the vinyl format as well.

The top selling vinyl album in 2008 was Radiohead's In Rainbows, followed by the Beatles' Abbey Road, at 16,500 units.

"From what I'm gathering, strangely enough, it's the younger generation that are really kind of going back to [vinyl]," said Roy Trakin, editor of the U.S. music industry Web site Hits. "It's a nostalgic throwback to listening to music in a traditional way."