Vinyl Chart Launched In UK

As sales of vinyl albums and singles continue to soar, the UK’s first weekly vinyl chart has been launched by the Officials Charts Company.

12:36 13 April 2015

The sales of vinyl albums and singles have reached £1.29 million, an 18-year-high and is expected to grow by another 70per cent this year, overturning predictions that it would be obsolete as CDs and MPs gained popularity. This year’s biggest-selling vinyl album so far is Chasing Yesterday by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Bird. 

 

Because of this recent development, the UK’s first weekly vinyl chart have been launched by the Official Charts Company ahead of Record Store Day on 18 April. It was topped by All Time Low’s Future Hearts – echoing the week’s UK album chart broadcast on BBC Radio 1. 

 

The charts company said it was responding to "the huge surge of interest" that has seen vinyl sales climb from a low of 0.1% of the albums market in 2007 (205,000) to 1.5% in 2014 (1.29m).

 

"Yes, it's still a small part of the business," admitted chief executive Martin Talbot.

 

"But what makes this so unusual is that usually you see new formats arrive and grow in popularity, reach their peak and then they decline and kind of disappear.

 

"Here you've got something that has grown in popularity back in the 60s and 70s, declined in popularity through the 80s and 90s, got right the way down to the bottom and then started climbing back out again."