People in the UK are buying vinyl, but they aren't listening to it
LONDON -- Vinyl sales have had a resurgence in recent years but almost half of those buyers apparently don't even play their records.
Almost 48% of UK vinyl buyers surveyed by ICM say they haven't listened to their records a month after purchase, according to the BBC.
And 7% don't even own a turntable.
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Findings from the survey appear to show that online streaming is boosting sales of vinyl. People tend to buy albums on vinyl after listening to them online on ad-funded sites like YouTube and SoundCloud.
Younger people are discovering music online, then buying it to support their favourite artists -- or just for their own collections.
"I have vinyls in my room but it's more for decor. I don't actually play them."
"I have vinyls in my room but it's more for decor. I don't actually play them," said Jordan Katende, a student in Manchester.
Admiration for the way their parents experienced music plays a part in vinyl purchases for young people too.
"It's so easy to listen to music now on YouTube or Spotify, I think we're yearning for the times of our parents where you had to go out of your way to buy a song," student Duncan Willis told the BBC.
Vinyl sales climbed 64% to a 21-year high in 2015, with 2.1 million LPs purchased, according to Official Charts.
Vinyl's resurgence has been a surprising success story for the music industry. Very much mainstream retailers like Sainsbury's and Tesco now stock the format, and Record Store Day -- which has championed vinyl for years -- is a well-publicised and attended occasion.
But it's important to keep vinyl's actual share of the market in perspective. ICM Unlimited research says 73% of music is bought online, with Amazon being the top seller.
About 8% of men have bought vinyl in the last month and that figure has stayed pretty steady, ICM says. But in 2013 only 3% of women purchased vinyl, and that's now risen to 5%.
"It is still the case that less than 1 in 10 people are buying vinyl, and we shouldn't forget that it's still a relatively small part of the market," Andrew Wiseman, head of ICM Unlimited, told the BBC.
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Liza Hearon was the Deputy Editor for Mashable UK. Liza started her career in journalism writing about punk bands for a 'zine in Florida, and her wanderlust has led her to work for news organisations in Russia, Japan and now London. Prior to joining Mashable, she was the European homepage editor for the Wall Street Journal. Liza loves podcasts, karaoke and really, really spicy food.
