​Vinyl sales show strong increase as digital music sales continue to drop

Nielsen Music, the information and sales tracking system, has released its Q3 report and found that this year’s vinyl sales have already surpassed 2016’s numbers with Q4 still to come, according to Billboard.

After analyzing data from album sales in the United States, Nielson revealed that both physical and digital sales have fallen, with the one exception of vinyl sales. CD sales fell 19.9 per cent and digital sales fell 19.5 percent, but vinyl sales increased by 3.1 per cent, with close to 10 million units sold.

As digital music sales continue to drop, streaming numbers continue to climb at a staggering pace. In the past nine months audio and video streams hit 442.44 billion, an increase of 40.5% from 2016.

In other vinyl related news, Discogs is growing strong as well, having recently passed the 9 million mark for releases logged in it's online database. Discogs COO Chad Dahlstrom touched on how this reflects the current market:

"What we're experiencing in the growth of contributors and submissions to the Discogs Database only echoes the thriving passion for music's physical formats. The Discogs Database mission will never lose focus on preserving physical releases in any format imaginable from every part of the world."

Judging by these numbers, it's clear that streaming platforms are leading the music industry, while vinyl is keeping physical music relevant.