BPI POLL GETS TO HEART OF VINYL LOVE

Labels believe young consumers are increasingly using streaming services to sample albums before buying physical copies of their favorite artists’ work—preferably vinyl—the U.K.’s Telegraph posits in summarizing the results of a new survey conducted for the BPI and the Entertainment Retailers Association.

The responses suggest that young music streamers are motivated to purchase vinyl albums because of the combined lures of ownership, perceived improved sound quality and the desire to support their favorite artists by putting money in their pockets.

Consumers are expected to stream a record 25 billion tracks this year, according to the Official Charts Company, nearly double the 13.7 billion recorded in 2014. At the same time, while CD sales are still slipping, the rate of decline has slowed from 20% in 2012 to just 6% in the first six months of this year.

Said BPI CEO Geoff Taylor: “The enduring appeal of compact discs and vinyl has surprised many commentators who wrote them off years ago. Our new research explains why they remain so popular, even with music downloads and the explosion in audio streaming. It shows that, unexpectedly, streaming may be enhancing their appeal to many fans, who appreciate the immediacy and convenience of services like Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play to discover and enjoy a huge range of new music, but still want to own and collect albums by artists they truly love.”