It has been revealed that Urban Outfitters is now the biggest seller of vinyl, worldwide. UO's chief administrative officer, Calvin Hollinger, revealed: "Music is very, very important to the Urban customer. In fact, we are the world number one vinyl seller!" Given that UO is a worldwide corporation and the majority of its competition in the vinyl market is mostly independent stores, in actuality, the news doesn't pose as shocking.
The general breakdown is, Urban Outfitters do not actually own the stock, opting to rent out shelf space to something in the region of 100 vendors—making much more commercial sense for these retailers, given the decline of sales the decline of sales the past year. It's estimated that artists get a lesser cut from UO sales than they would directly from their merch table's, but this still comes in higher than online purchases.
The revival of vinyl has proven to be an almost isolated area of success for the music industry in recent years; vinyl sales in the States passed the six million marks, which is the highest it has been in over 20 years. Jack White recently broke vinyl sales records with his latest LP, Lazaretto, shifting 40,000 copies in its first week of release.
[via Buzzfeed]
