How did vinyl record sales outpace CD sales in the United States?

This is the first since 1987 in the United States: vinyl sales (41 million copies) in 2022 will exceed CD sales (33 million), which is evidence of the enthusiasm for this fashionable retro format. Beauty thing for some, sound quality for others, this phenomenon has revived the turntable industry with analog read heads.

At his New York store, Village Revival Records, Jamal Al Nasr savors this return to grace. “Who would have imagined that vinyl would come back to life?smiles the 50-year-old who left the West Bank as a teenager to settle in New York. For thirty years, he’s been selling new and used vinyl in his Greenwich Village store. Now.A new generation, kids, (come on) to get all the music from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’she explains.They know more than us, who grew up in the ’90s or ’80sHe laughs again.

Sound warmers and covers to display on the wall

At Village Revival Records you can meet Vijay Damerla, who is 20 years old. The student admits that he mostly listens to music online, but even though he doesn’t own a record player, he’s started collecting vinyl, mainly for visual art for covers. “It’s the equivalent of an artist poster or even an album poster on your wallHe explains before adding:Except that actually, it’s a bit of a relic of the past“.

For Celine Court, 29, who is originally from the Netherlands and claims to own a 250 vinyl, what matters most is the nostalgia for a warmer sound, which we won’t find on digital listening. “It’s very different“, as you say.”There is this sense of authenticity that radiates“. Streaming, which continues to take the lion’s share (84% of the $15.9 billion in music sales in the US in 2022) is “Very fast and very easy“, she believes.

Metallica just bought a pressing plant

There is such a craze for vinyl across the Atlantic that supermarkets such as Wal-Mart have adopted the format. As for stars like Taylor Swift, Harry Styles or Billie Eilish, they keep pressing factories running at full speed, overflowing with orders. This week, heavy metal band Metallica purchased a wafer maker, Furnace Record Pressing, to meet demand for its reissue.

Record store Jamal Al-Nasr, who has befriended stars like Lana Del Rey, Rosalía and Bella Hadid, is ready to ship a VIP record. But he prefers that buyers feelphysical experience“.”I want people to come here and dig into the vinyl and get to know (…) they’ll see a lot more than the facade, there’s a lot of hidden gems hereexplains the enthusiast, who has a rotating inventory of about 200,000 vinyls. His client, Celine Court, agrees: There is better energy when you collect your vinyl, when you listen to it and take pride in it“.