EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: VINYL OUTSELLS DOWNLOADS

In a first, vinyl albums outsold downloaded albums in the U.K. last week. The final score was vinyl £2.4m ($3m), downloads £2.1m ($2.6m), per stats published by the Entertainment Retailers Association. That’s 120k vinyl albums vs. 295k download units.

It appears that price is no object for vinyl lovers—at least not during the holiday gift-giving season. The week's top seller was Before the Dawn, a triple live album from Kate Bush, priced at £52 ($65.50).

Before you say “It can’t happen here,” consider Brexit and the recent U.S. election.

This phenomenon appears to have as much to do with the slippage of downloads as streaming takes hold as it does with the vinyl renaissance.

In any case, we’re curious to see first-week vinyl sales on The Rolling Stones’ Blue & Lonesome (Interscope), which is a double LP despite its 42-minute running time and is going for $37.04 at Amazon, where it’s backordered.