Vinyl sales are still on the rise in the UK, with nearly 640k LPs purchased in Q1 2016 – a figure that`s up 61.8% on the same period in 2015, according to BPI and Official Charts Company research.
The rise is largely down to legions of Bowie fans paying tribute to the late star by purchasing his last album, Blackstar, and seminal releases from his vast catalogue in vinyl form, alongside a growing number of specialist chains and supermarkets stocking the format.
Those numbers are only expected to grow with Record Store Day taking place tomorrow, and could reach the 3.5m mark by year-end. Vinyl’s share of the album market nearly doubled to 3.9% from January to March, up from 2.1% in Q1 2015.
The pattern follows a similar rate of growth of 64% for all of 2015, when LP sales climbed for an eighth successive year to 2.1 million units – a 21-year high.
In the three months to March 31st, Blackstar sold nearly twice as many copies on LP as the top vinyl seller for 2015 – Adele’s 25, which claimed the title in just six weeks and takes fourth place on the Official Vinyl Chart Top 10 Albums for Q1 2016.
Bowie albums also accounted for three of the Top 10 in the Official Chart Company`s best-selling vinyl LPs in Q1, with Nothing Has Changed – The Very Best Of at No.6 and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust at No.8.
There were four David Bowie recordings in the Official Vinyl Chart Top-10 best-selling singles of the quarter, including Golden Years at No.1, Space Oddity at No.3, Fame at No.6 and Sue (Or In A Season of Crime) at No.10.Music Business Worldwide
