Urban Outfitters Becomes the World’s Largest Seller of Vinyl

While the trend “retro-ing” things has definitely been profitable in fashion, it now also looks to be pretty successful in the music business. Sales of vinyl records has been steadily rising for years, and last year’s 6.1 million records sold was the highest since 1991, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and sales this year are forecast to grow even more. The sales of vinyl can now be credited to an unlikely source, as BuzzFeed now reports that largest seller of vinyl has come from none other than clothing retail chain Urban Outfitters. While last year 64% of vinyl sales came from independent record stores, UO, as one of the only worldwide corporations in the vinyl-selling business, has a unique distributing advantage which lets them seamlessly offer records from roughly 100 vendors without actually owning that inventory. Down below you can view a chart created by Statista, which shows how vinyl sales have skyrocketed in the past few years.