On a recent Sunday afternoon in February in the young and trendy Shibuya district, Akira Nagai is one of the many customers record hunting at HMV Record Shop Shibuya, which mainly deals in vinyl.

Nagai, 16, has started buying records by Hikaru Utada and other musicians on vinyl, even though the first-year senior high school student from Yokohama subscribes to a music streaming service.

"The static noise produced when the needle is dropped onto the disc warms my heart, and it lifts my spirits just to see (the records) placed in my room," Nagai said.

In an age of digital online streaming services, promising libraries packed with tens of millions of songs for about 1,000 yen ($9.40) a month, analog record sales are off the charts.

The Recording Industry Association of America said in a shocking report released last fall that vinyl records outsold CDs in the first half of 2020 in the United States.

In Japan, vinyl sales have increased by more than 10 times in the past decade. According to the Recording Industry Association of Japan, sales of analog records bottomed out at 170 million yen in 2010, but then by 2020, sales increased by more than 10 times to 2.12 billion yen.

YOUTH DRIVE RECORD SALES REBOUND

According to the HMV's Shibuya store manager, Minoru Nomiyama, those in their 30s or younger account for one-third of the customers, though records were old fashioned when they were growing up and CDs dominated the market.

The record shop has seen a 30-percent increase in annual sales since it opened in 2014. Sales decreased last year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, but online sales grew by 1.5 times year on year.

The Tower Vinyl Shinjuku, which opened in the Shinjuku district in the capital in 2019 to exclusively deal in analog records, also attracts many young customers.

"I think (analog records) are fresh to them because they have no experience of owning music in physical form," staffer Tsuyoshi Tanoue said.

The number of new releases also grew more than seven times to 316 from 42.

In 2016, Sony Music Group launched the analog record label Great Tracks. In 2017, it started making vinyl records for the first time in 29 years and has completed the second production line at its factory. 

Satoshi Makita, a director at Sony Music Direct (Japan) Inc., pointed out that more than half of young people who buy analog records might not even own a player, adding that there is huge demand for vinyl records for interior decorating.

"While things have become increasingly digitized, I think we go after and find relief in analog materials because we can touch them and they come in physical forms," he said.

Music critic Kenta Hagiwara said analog records can re-create the feel of an album in a manner closer to how the musicians intended them to sound.

On the other hand, part of the appeal of vinyl is that the sound of the recordings changes with age.

"Digital data won't degrade over time while record sleeves can wear out and analog records get scratches to produce more crackling noises, but that's all part of feeling like you and the music are growing old together," Hagiwara added.

POP STARS PUSH REWIND

An increasing number of famous musicians such as Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga are also releasing their music on cassette tapes, re-energizing the market for a medium that not too long ago seemed outmoded.

According to the British Phonographic Industry, cassette sales doubled in 2020 from the previous year, with 157,000 music tapes sold in Britain to record the highest sales in 15 years.

Taro Tsunoda, who runs the cassette tape store Waltz in Tokyo's Nakameguro district, said independent musicians in the U.S. West Coast started releasing their music on tapes in the early 2010s because cassettes can be produced at a low cost and can still be played in cars. After that, artists in Europe and elsewhere around the world followed suit.

Since the shop opened in 2015, sales continued to increase by 40 percent every year until 2019, before the pandemic hit.

"The charm is that it produces punchy sounds, especially in the midrange," Tsunoda said. "Subscription services allow you to listen to tens of millions of songs at a fixed rate, but you'll end up taking music for granted. Under such circumstances, (the cassette) is enjoying a revival in interest for its value as a format."