A report released yesterday by ARIA has revealed that Australians are still actually buying CDs and phonograph records, or ‘vinyl,’ in impressively large numbers in a trend that’s being described as defying international patterns of record sales. Also, logic.
Sales of vinyl records in 2012 have reportedly almost doubled on figures from the year before last, as did digital sales which blossomed by another 50%, generating $184,302,651 from 119,070,094 digital sales.
21,088,493 physical sales of recently the re-introduced single, CDs and vinyl long players amassed a staggering $213,830,970 for the local (and international) music industry and the purveyors of its biggest hits, including Guy Sebastian, Psy, Carly Rae Jepsen, One Direction and Flo Rida.
Speaking with news.com.au, ARIA CEO, Dan Rosen, attributed the growth in physical sales to a kind of preemptive nostalgia; that is, people buying physical souvenirs of gigs they attended during that tentative time when they liked One Direction real bad, so that one day they’ll be able to look back, laugh awkwardly, squirm uncomfortably and have a lasting “memory of the show.”
“It’s got to be cultural because it’s not the case in the UK and US. And even vinyl, while the sales are small, doubled last year because I think people want that momento [sic] of their passion, their fandom.”
It’s almost certainly not the case in the UK, where an HMV employee/social media intern went rogue earlier this week on Twitter after being retrenched, because #YOLO; especially if you’re in the business of physical record sales in the UK, in which case #RIP.
via news.com.au
Photo by Mark Metcalfe via Getty Images
