RIAA: Vinyl Is Back!

Written by Frank Smith

Tuesday, April 29. 2008 at 03:40 PM EDT 2 comments

Digg   Del.icio.us   Reddit   Email This

no ratings

• Login to Rate

Sales of compact discs in the United States continue to decline, but digital revenues in 2007 have more than doubled since 2005, say new data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) .

In the U.S. shipments of CDs were down 17.5 percent in 2007, while digital formats (such as MP3s) now account for 23 percent of U.S. recording revenues. This is up 16.1 percent from 2006 and 9 percent from 2005.

About 809.9 million digital songs were downloaded/sold in 2007, up 38 percent from 2006. Ringtones and other mobile music downloadable dealies were up 14.6 percent in 2007. There was an 85 percent increase in mobile music sales between 2005 and 2006.

Total U.S. digital and physical music shipments in 2007 were up 11.6 percent. However, the total retail value of those sales was down 11.8 percent from 2006.

In weird twist of fate, sales of albums in the LP/EP format (on vinyl) increased in 2007 by 36.6 percent compared to 2006. Vinyl sales declined from 2005 to 2006, leaving no expectations for a sudden rise in sales of the format.

While it isn't a trend across the board for record manufacturers, many independently released records come with an offer to download free MP3s of the album after purchasing the album on vinyl.