MORE vinyl records than CDs are sold in Spain nowadays – something not seen since 1991 when the former was falling out of fashion and the latter still a luxury to many.
True to the notion that, if you keep anything for long enough, it becomes all the rage again, a report by Promusicae reveals that the old-time 12” and 7” turntable discs are now at their most popular in over 30 years.
In fact, they make up well over half – about 54% - of the market for non-digital music, or sounds with a physical 'support'.
Sales of vinyl totalled €13.6 million, increasing by 25.6%, in the first half of 2022 – and, nowadays, they carry a very high price tag in recognition of their 'vintage' nature.
Overall, sales of recorded music – physical supports such as CDs, records and cassettes, and also digital supports, such as downloads or subscriptions to platforms – totalled €191.5m between January and June 2022 inclusive, rising by 12.4% on the previous six months.
Digital, or intangible formats are still the most common among consumers, but vinyl is seeing a massive comeback: Around 1.6 million old-style records were bought in Spain in 2021, a market worth around €25m.
CDs are still sold in mainstream stores - in fact, they're the only ‘physical’ music support you're likely to find outside of a specialist record shop (photo: Recordhead.biz)
Back then, sales of these earliest music supports had already risen by 32% on the previous year's figures.
Rewinding barely a decade, fewer than 140,000 vinyls were sold in Spain in the year 2013 – but they were still making the transition from 'out of date' to 'retro gems', as the end of their heyday was still too recent for them to be sought-after goods among anyone but serious collectors.
By the early 1990s, singles released were beginning to be retailed in cassette format rather than 7” vinyl, with these already having gradually overtaken 12” albums in the previous 20 years or so; common practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s was to buy 7” singles where these were cheaper, and then record them onto blank tapes.
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