Vinyl sales topped three million last year, the highest UK total in 25 years.
More than 3.2 million records were sold in 2016, a rise of 53% on the previous year, according to the BPI, which represents the music industry.
David Bowie’s Blackstar was the most popular album on vinyl, selling more than double the number of copies of 2015’s biggest-seller, Adele’s 25.
The last time vinyl fared so well in the UK, in 1991, Simply Red’s Stars was the year’s biggest-selling record.
However, vinyl still only accounts for 2.6% of the overall music market – and while it continues to enjoy a resurgence, sales of CDs and downloads are falling rapidly.
A total of 47.3 million CDs were bought in 2016, a drop of 11.7%; while downloads plummeted by 29.6%, with just 18.1 million albums bought online.
Four years ago, when the download market was at its peak, that figure was 32.6 million. Now, consumers are increasingly turning to streaming services.
According to the BPI, there were approximately 45 billion audio streams in 2016 – the equivalent of the UK’s 27 million households each listening to 1,500 songs over the course of the year.
In December, more than a billion streams were served in a single week for the first time. To put that in context, the UK is now streaming more songs in a week than it did in a month just three years ago.
Additionally, the BPI’s figures do not account for music listened to on YouTube because the Official Chart Company does not collect data from Google’s video streaming service.
However, it is estimated that if YouTube was included, the figure for streams accessed by music fans in the UK would double.
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