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What Goes Around Comes Around

By Carl Winfield

What Goes Around Comes Around

As CD sales continue to slide, the recording industry may start to get a little help from an old friend: the vinyl album, already a favorite of indie labels. Shipments of LPs grew by almost 37% from 2006 to 2007, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. And sales in 2008’s first quarter were at 1.25 million units, up 70% from a year earlier.

Mike Batt, vice-president of Silver Platters, a Seattle retailer, says the bump is the result of twentysomething hipsters joining the connoisseurs who have long talked up analog records’ warmer tones. The albums also have something you can’t get on CDs and downloaded songs, says Susan L’Ecuyer, a spokesperson for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers: a full-size cover jacket. “Consumers can get a musical work of art that comes inside a graphic piece of art,” she says. While vinyl shipments (of both old and new albums) are tiny compared with the 511 million CDs shipped in 2007, major labels are taking notice. Warner Bros. Music recently relaunched a vinyl-focused Web site, becausesoundmatters.com. Among its offerings: the soundtrack to The Dark Knight ($26.99) and a $29.98 edition of Metallica’s Master of Puppets, first released in 1986 by Elektra Records.