Vinyl Section coming to Best Buy?

VINYL SECTION AT BIG BOX RETAILER?! Best Buy is considering devoting eight square feet of merchandising space to vinyl after testing the idea in 100 of its stores around the country, the N.Y. Post’s Peter Lauria reports. That’s enough space to accommodate just under 200 albums, which doesn’t seem like much until you consider that a typical Best Buy store devotes just 16 to 20 square feet to music. After increasing 15% in 2007, vinyl sales jumped 89% last year to 1.9 million albums, and this year is shaping up even better, with 670k albums sold by mid-April. While vinyl's growth obviously can't make up for the CD’s decline, it does show consumers haven't abandoned the physical format. And the fact that a retailer of Best Buy's size is willing to expand vinyl offerings is an incremental positive for a beleaguered industry.