An employee for the Portland-based company owned by The Kroger Co., made an error and ordered a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" by entering the "LP" code instead of the CD-DVD code. Some of the lps were shipped back while a few were put on the shelves. They started selling. The company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out vinyl in July in all its stores that sell music.
Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats. In 2007, sales of vinyls made up 7% of all music sales. 25% of those sales were made by people age 45 and older.
The resurgence of vinyl centers on a long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and place them very close together as a complete package that sounds nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.
Analog recordings on most LPs are continuous, which produces a truer sound -- though, paradoxically, some new LP releases are being recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.
The interest seems to be catching on. Turntable sales are picking up, and the few remaining record pressers say business is booming. .
Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, versus just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could reach 1.6 million in 2008. .
