The hottest vinyl seller in years
A quick followup to my post yesterday on the top ten vinyl sellers of 2008: I just called my local record (I do mean record) store, Sonic Boom, to reserve a copy of the new Animal Collective record, Merriweather Post Pavilion, on vinyl. It came out on Tuesday, January 6. The clerk laughed and said he'd never seen such a hot-selling LP. Not only were Sonic Boom's copies one by the end of the 6th, they can't order more because their distributor's out, and they can't find another distributor because the label's out. They're expecting a second shipment later this month.
Not in stock.
So while vinyl may only be 0.1% of total album sales, sales doubled from 2007 and 2008, and hot titles are obviously hard to keep in stock. Who knows, with CD sales plummeting, vinul could be up to 0.2% by the end of this year. And I bet MPP will be in the top ten.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
