Vinyl is back. In 2016 sales of vinyl soared by 53 per cent – in one week in December records outsold digital downloads for the first time. Sam Howard thinks he knows why

IT’S a ritual you may know well. You open the cover, gatefold awash with lyrics, art, photographs. You pull at the paper lining inside the cardboard sleeve. The foot-wide black disc slides out onto your poised fingertips. You rest it on the turntable and lift the stylus, finding the furthest groove on the very edge of the record.

It starts, that oh-so-familiar crackle, subset with the occasion pop of the needle hitting a solitary speck of dust. The music begins, and memories begin to flood back. You remember where you were, what you were doing, who was with you that first time, as you lose yourself in the wave of sound.

This is just not an experience that you can get from MP3s. It's a vinyl record and, after decades in the doldrums, vinyl is on the rise.

Only yesterday, a report by Deloitte predicted global sales of vinyl records will break through the $1bn (£820 million) for the first time this century in 2017. Ten per cent of global revenues will also come from the sale of new turntables and accessories.

More than 3.2 million LPs were sold last year, according to separate figures published by the British Phonographic Industry last week, a rise of 53 per cent on 2015 and the highest annual total since 1991.

Tom Butchart at Sound It Out Records in Stockton believes that the resurgence is down to the quality of the product. He says: “When it comes to physical products people like to have something in their hands. And then actually physically putting it onto a turntable, people like that. Even though it’s retro, it’s quite futuristic in this day and age."

Tom, who has been running his store for 18 years, says his customer base is a lot broader these days than it once was.

“The age range will probably be the greatest spread, six to 80. Every age group is buying vinyl, from children coming in with their dads or grandparents, to teenagers and twenty-somethings who have wised up to the soullessness of the download, 40-50 year olds re-buying their collections after they believed the CD hype, to the 60+ generation who are coming in and buying their youth."

“The stories are just great,” says Tom. “One couple who must be in their late 70s come in once a month. He buys soul and rock 'n’ roll and plays them in his shed, the wife buys Foster and Allan and country and she sits in the conservatory. They bicker about music, it’s just brilliant to watch and very light-hearted.”

In the first week of December vinyl actually outsold digital downloads by £2.4m to £2.1m. Twelve months earlier vinyl sales amounted to £1.2m, compared to £4.4m for downloads. Just nine years ago LPs accounted for 0.1 per cent of all total UK album sales, a paltry 205,000. Since then, vinyl sales have risen steadily.

North-East vinyl enthusiast Philip Newbold was at the centre of the Analogue Addicts campaign in 1994 to save the vinyl LP. He says: “It’s taken a long time for the message to get through! I think it’s partly because the quality is better than the average CD player, and also because these days there are a lot of bands who release music to be experienced as an album rather than cherrypicked tracks.

“The vinyl is also being pressed properly, often in 180g virgin vinyl with great care and often in limited numbers. It’s being made how it always should have been made, not like some of the floppy, scratchy rubbish we used to get,” he adds.

Paul Lee, Deloitte’s head of technology, media and telecoms research, sums it up: “The ubiquity of music streaming services means that music has never been more accessible, portable and readily available for the consumer. Yet consumers are choosing to buy something tangible and nostalgic and at a price that provides significant revenues.”

Vinyl will never supplant digital, he says, but the big black discs are definitely here to stay.

As for me, I believe that the revival is rooted not in a sense of nostalgia, as many vinyl enthusiasts are too young to remember a time when records were the primary musical format, but instead an attraction to the quality of the physical package.

The appeal of a format which consists of music, written in tiny grooves and wrapped in a large piece of artwork vastly outweighs the appeal of clinical sounding music consisting of a long sequence of ones and zeroes accompanied by a digital photograph of the cover.

People are beginning to understand what it is they nearly lost – a warm, welcoming format that should be treasured; a testament to the simple joys in life, and something that should never again be allowed to slip through our fingers.