The first ever National Album Day has been announced

The first ever National Album Day has been announced to celebrate 70 years since the ‘invention’ of the modern day album format. The event will be held on 13th October as the culmination of a series of music events across the UK.

The events will include retail events and artist personal appearances, album playbacks, artist interviews, fan Q&As and online listening parties.

A social media campaign (@AlbumDayUK / #NationalAlbumDay) will also invite people to nominate and share the album that has most inspired them and at 3.33pm on the day itself, fans, stores, radio stations and public spaces will be invited to play their favourite album in full.

Paloma Faith, who’s an ambassador for this year’s event, says: “I vividly remember being excited by so many classic albums as I was growing up, like Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’, Dylan’s ‘Freewheelin’’, and Erykah Badu’s ‘Mama’s Gun’, although, if I had to pick one, the album that most inspired me was Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut. It featured the incredibly powerful ‘Why?’ - a song that has become a real anthem for me not least as it was the first to bring home the emotional power of lyrics. The way we engage with music may be changing, but for me the album remains the ultimate expression of the songwriter’s craft.”

In 2017, 135 million albums (or their streaming equivalent), were either purchased on CD and vinyl, downloaded or streamed, which was a rise of 9.5% on the previous year.

Demand for vinyl LPs rose an incredible 26.8%, with unit sales hitting the 4.1 million mark – the highest level since the start of the 1990’s and representing over a decade of consecutive growth.