Interest
Sony Hops on the Vinyl Bandwagon After 29 Years
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
Vinyl records are experiencing a renaissance of sorts and sales have spiked. Last year, vinyl accounted for 14 percent of all physical album sales in the U.S. This is a 9 percent increase compared to last year, a total of 14.32 million vinyl records sold. This slow climb started a decade ago and even DEVILMAN crybaby is joining the trend.
Sony Music Entertainment (SME) announced that it'll be adding its catalog to the vinyl craze. The company introduced a stamper manufacturing facility for analog records at Sony DADC Japan, one of its disc manufacturing factories. The company announced its first two in-house produced vinyl records in nearly 30 years: Eiichi Ohtaka Song Book III: Yume de Aetara and 52nd Street by Billy Joel.
The Eiichi Ohtaka album is a best-of collection of the singer's works from 1976 to 2018. The CD version includes four discs with 70 tracks. The vinyl edition has three tracks on its A side and two tracks on its B side. The Billy Joel album is a reproduction of the album's original U.S. release in 1985.
SME CEO and representative director Michinori Mizuno commented that vinyl record sales are worth 30 billion yen in the U.S. (US$275.5 million) but still only about 3 billion yen (US$27.5 million) in Japan. However, Mizuno expects the market to continue to grow in Japan and SME plan to foster that growth.
Source: AV Watch (臼田勤哉) via Hachima Kikō
