LANCASTER, Pa. — In an age where music can be streamed at the touch of button, physical formats of music have had to compete.
But for the first time in over thirty-years, vinyl records overtake CD sales.
Vinyl record sales have slowly increased since being outperformed in 1987 by compact discs. It's taken 36 years for vinyl's to finally come out on top again.
According to the Recording Industry Assocation of American, vinyl sales are up 17 percent in 2022 and generated $1.2 billion in sales.
Dan Flynn, Co-owner of Day in the Life Records, said Vinyl records, “came back because it was superior and because ultimately there’s nothing like pulling a record out of the sleeve, putting it on, physically engaging with it.”
Flynn has bought and sold records for years and believes vinyl offers something to music lovers that CDs and streaming cannot.
"It was a piece of art, a physical piece of art that you could look at and you could read the liner notes and you could sort of have that experience while you were listening," Flynn said.
Digital music is meant to be more convenient for consumers, but often sacrifices sound quality because of their compressed format.
“There was this previous method that ultimately did sound sonically superior to everything else, vinyl was always the superior format and it sort of, not everyone recognized that for a while," Flynn said.
Flynn attributes vinyl’s growing sales to a younger generation interested in starting a physical music collection.
“There are quite a lot of young people who are starting their record collections, they’re not replacing one that they might’ve let go, and when someone finds something that they’re really excited about, it’s definitely a good thing," Flynn said.
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