Urban Outfitters doesn't just make money off selling offensive sweatshirts and smiley face crop tops to your little sister for V Festival – it turns out that the store also sells the most vinyl records in the world.

"Music is very, very important to the Urban customer... in fact, we are the world’s number one vinyl seller,” Calvin Hollinger, the company’s chief administrative officer, told analysts in a meeting yesterday.

According to Hollinger, Urban Outfitters actually rents out shelf space to about 100 vendors without owning the stock itself. It makes a lot of commercial sense for the retailer, given that sales have declined steadily over the past year.

But it also means that you get the opposite experience of what you'd get in an independent music store which offers a more personalised and curated selection – when you look through a stack of records in the store, you're essentially looking at the vinyl equivalent of an Amazon warehouse. 

Either way, Urban Outfitters' commitment to vinyl must come as good news to the music execs. Vinyl is one of the few bright spots in its otherwise depressingly downward industry spiral, with US sales hitting six million in 2013, the highest level since at least 1991. It's just not so good news for your local record shop. 

(h/t Buzzfeed)