For the first time ever, older albums outsold new ones last year

Ambitious garage bands are hereby advised to stop practicing, and all up-and-coming songwriters might as well enroll at DeVry right now. Conversely, those musicians still lucky enough to be getting royalties from decades-old releases might want to seriously consider remodeling their kitchens: As reported by Adam Pugsley in Chart Attack, so-called “catalog albums,” or albums older than 18 months, are now outselling new releases for the first time in the history of the recording industry— in terms of physical sales, at least. In digital sales of whole albums, new releases are still (barely) ahead. But in terms of digital sales of individual tracks, the nostalgic stuff leads the way, a trend that not even the massive success of Adele can reverse. Chart Attack even has some snazzy charts documenting this paradigm shift: