Vinyl revival in the UK

21 April 2018 is Record Store Day and to mark the occasion, this infographic charts the somewhat astonishing rebirth of the LP. Astonishing not only in terms of its scale, but also because, unless you're a DJ, vinyl is essentially an obsolete medium. Since its heyday we've used and thrown away cassettes, CDs, mindisks, to some extent MP3s, and are now shifting over to streaming.

There's clearly something about those polyvinyl chloride discs though. Back in 2007, there were roughly 210 thousand new vinyl albums sold in the UK. Last year 4.1 million were picked up by eager buyers - an increase of 1,852 percent. As another of our infographics has shown though, not all of these records will actually be listened to, but rather end up hanging on someone's wall.