Turntables Were a Big Christmas Present in 2015

The vinyl resurgence continued in 2015 in both the U.S. and England.



The most striking statistic was recently reported by the British chain HMV who stated they sold one turntable per minute, on average, in the week before Christmas. The company's CEO, Ian Topping, stated that "Entertainment products form a major part of the Christmas shopping list. The gift of the year in 2015, though, has to be a turntable as we see a huge resurgence in the sales of vinyl."



For Britain, that resurgence has seen a ten-fold increase in vinyl sales over the last eight years. Gennaro Costaldo of Britain's BPI told the Scottsman "The vinyl revival is one of the fairytale success stories of recent years. Having faced near-extinction in 2007, when only 205,000 LPs were sold, it’s likely we’ll see the best part of two million copies purchased this year."



Those numbers were also reflected in the U.S. where Amazon reports that their top selling item for the Christmas season in Home Audio was the Jensen JTA-230 3-Speed Stereo Turntable with Built-in Speakers (above right). That device, priced at just over $50, also includes a USB port to make digital copies of the records.



Final number for vinyl sales in 2015 should be out later this month.