Vinyl Music Gives Record Stores a Boost in a Digital World

Record stores have not only survived the onslaught of pirated music, digital downloads and online streaming services. They’re now growing in numbers.

Several hundred indie music retailers have opened in the past five years in the U.S. thanks largely to the resurgence of vinyl records, industry officials say.

“Stores are popping up in small towns. There’s enough vinyl business to support them. You have a lot of young entrepreneurs who are seeing this opportunity,” said Wes Lowe from Alliance Entertainment Corp., the nation’s largest wholesale distributor of compact discs, DVDs and vinyl record albums.

That gives music lovers something to cheer as Record Store Day celebrates its 10th anniversary Saturday in stores from Maine to California.The annual event pays homage to the neighborhood music store, the place where people have long gathered to thumb through vinyl records or cassette tapes. Back in the 1970s, every community had at least one of them, but hundreds went out of business at the onset of the digital music revolution.

The number of independent record stores leveled off at about 2,000 before growing over the past five years to a number that’s closer to 2,400, Lowe said.

The resurgence in vinyl sales is helping.