Ongoing success of vinyl highlighted by BPI report. (News).

UK record buyers' continuing love affair with vinyl has been further confirmed by new figures revealing more than one-fifth of all LPs sold around the world last year was bought in Britain.

The UK claimed a global market share of 22.0% for vinyl LP sales during the year, easily surpassing its 8.3% share for all music sales. At the same time, the number of titles issued on vinyl in the UK hit a 10-year high.

Figures from the BPI's 2002 Statistical Handbook--which is due to be published this week--show that more than 2,700 new releases were issued on the format over the year, the third successive yearly rise and more than 1,000 titles up from 1998. By comparison, the number of titles issued either on cassette or MiniDisc showed a dramatic decline over the previous year.

Vinyl manufacturer Simply Vinyl's head of A&R Ian Dewhurst predicts that the popularity of vinyl will continue. "We expect this year to be massively up on last year, as we're really starting to penetrate the High Street," he says. "Some people really just prefer vinyl. They find it a much warmer sound to listen to, if a little inconvenient. It also feels more authentic when you hold it because of its size and artwork."

The growing DJ scene has been pinpointed as one of the key reasons for the growth in the popularity of vinyl over the past few years. However, Dewhurst says that they press more than 500 lines ranging from jungle and techno through to reggae, Sixties and Seventies rock and pop, gangster rap and soundtracks. "There's something about people's love of spinning vinyl that will never go away," he says.

Despite the fact that dance is helping to boost vinyl sales, by comparison dance's share of the ...