Planned activities include dedicated BBC Music programming and editorial support, retail events and artist personal appearances. Also planned is Classic Album Sundays LP playbacks, artist interviews/fan Q&As and online listening parties. For a full list of events that have been organised go here.
The first album recognised as being released on LP format was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, on the Columbia ‘Masterworks’ label released in June 1948. HMV and Sony Classical recently collaborated to reissue 500 limited edition copies of the album to celebrate its 70th anniversary
In 2017, 135 million albums, or their equivalent, were either purchased on CD and vinyl, downloaded or streamed – a rise of 9.5% on the previous year. Driven by a surge in streaming (51.5% increase to 68 billion streams) this represents the fastest rate of growth this millennium. Demand for vinyl LPs rose 26.8%, with unit sales hitting the 4.1 million mark – the highest level since the start of the 1990’s and representing over a decade of consecutive growth. The BPI estimates that a staggering 5 billion albums have been sold in the UK since the format’s advent in 1948.
CDs continued their decline (-12% year on year) as consumers switch to streaming and other formats, but still showed remarkable resilience with 41.6 million units purchased making up nearly a third of UK music consumption.
The Rise and Fall of the Compact Disc
The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), representing the nation’s music retailers and digital/streaming platforms, conducted a survey in May 2018, which showed that nearly 60% of respondents had listened to an album in full in the month prior to the online survey. And whilst albums are most often associated with older music consumers, the research suggested that it is actually younger fans who are more likely to have listened to an album recently. Over half (55%) of those polled aged 25 or below said they had listened to an album in the previous week, compared with 45% of 45-54 year-olds and just 33% of those aged 55 or above. The research also challenged the notion that albums are a male preserve with nearly four in ten (38%) female consumers having listened to an album in the week prior to the study, compared with 45% of male respondents.
