Urban Outfitters made the bold claim last week that it was the world's leading seller of vinyl records, irrespective of the fact that it's perhaps better known for its needlessly offensive t-shirts and "edgy" festival fashion fodder.
"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.
The sleuths over at Billboard conducted a survey and ascertained that taking into account online sales, "Amazon is the largest seller of vinyl in the U.S., with about 12.3% market share, followed by Urban Outfitters with 8.1% market share".
Urban Outfitters might have been able to stake a claim to the top spot if it had described itself as the number one physical seller of vinyl, but for now it'll have to settle for the silver medal. We're not really sure whether it's better news – it'd be great if an independent record store and vinyl specialist took top spot, but y'know, internet etc.
It's not all bad news for wax enthusiasts though – vinyl is enjoying a huge surge in popularity. Marketplace reports that vinyl sales in the US are increasing year on year. 1 million records were sold in 2007, compared to 6 million in 2013. 2014's figure is expected to surpass that again.
