Sainsbury’s claims to be the biggest seller of vinyl in the UK

Supermarket chain cites 70 per cent growth in vinyl demand

Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has claimed to the largest retailer of vinyl records in the UK after introducing the format back to its shelves earlier this year.

Sainsbury’s started stocking vinyl again back in March, saying at the time that it should not be regarded as an “elitist” format.

Now, according to the company’s first quarter 2016 trading report, consumer demand for vinyl grew by 70 per cent in the first quarter of 2016.

Advertisement

The supermarket also claims to have an 8% market share of all vinyl sales in the UK.

The return of vinyl to Sainsbury’s shelves is another milestone in the format’s ongoing resurgence. Tesco became the first UK supermarket chain to reintroduce LPs to its stores last year.

Sales of vinyl have also grown in the UK for the eighth year in a row – and the industry now makes more money from selling records than it does from sites like YouTube.

More than two million LPs were sold in Britain in 2015, which the BPI says could be the most since at least 1994 – the year of Oasis, Bon Jovi and The Beautiful South.

This bumper year for British vinyl, which saw 2.1 million LPs sold raked in £25.1m, which overtook the “meagre” £24.4m that YouTube and similar video streaming sites paid back from its users’ streams.

The BPI has meanwhile reported that streams grew 88 per cent between 2014 and 2015, with 26.6bn made in this country alone last year.

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories