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POP & HISS

Vinyl album sales growing

The resurgent vinyl market isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

In fact, recent figures released by Nielsen SoundScan indicate that overall U.S. vinyl sales will once again set a benchmark in 2009, with sales up 50% through the first five months of the year.

SoundScan predicts vinyl sales will reach 2.8 million units in 2009, up from 1.9 million in 2008, a record since SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991.

Already in 2009, vinyl sales have topped 1 million. At this point last year, vinyl sales stood at 701,000 copies. To be fair, the number is still tiny compared to overall album sales.

Vinyl, SoundScan points out, accounts for less than 1% of overall album sales. In other words, vinyl sales represent about six months in the life of Taylor Swift, whose late 2008 release, “Fearless,” has already sold more than 3.3 million copies. To date in 2009, 121.8 million CDs have been sold, versus 33.2 million digital albums, compared to 151.01 million CDs and 27.52 digital albums for the same period last year.

Yet vinyl appears to be a niche market that’s here to stay, and one that’s showing signs of expansion.

Rock albums account for 70% of all vinyl sold, but country vinyl is enjoying a growth spurt.

Year-to-date country vinyl sales are already at 15,000 copies, compared with 5,000 for the comparable period in 2008.

Of course, if someone wants to rain on the vinyl good news, there’s this stat: Vinyl sales were up 90% in 2008 over 2007, and the rate of growth has certainly slowed.

-- Todd Martens

From Pop & Hiss: The L.A. Times music blog

For more, go to latimes.com/pophiss

BABYLON & BEYOND

In Iraq, cement blast walls go up

Less than a month before U.S. forces leave their bases in Baghdad, Iraqi security forces are sealing off much of the northwestern Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya with the towering cement blast walls that the Americans first erected in neighborhoods in 2007 as a way to stop the city’s sectarian fighting.

The move comes after the Iraqi government has said it wants to start removing such walls from around neighborhoods as it seeks to promote the idea that life is improving in war-scarred Baghdad. At the end of June, the government hopes to open a road to the public that cuts through the Green Zone as proof that better times are here.

Kadhimiya, home to a Shiite holy shrine, has been bombed several times in the last year and an official from the interior ministry said that the walls were meant to thwart bombings. The official also said that the government was sealing off the district’s perimeter as an alternative to closing off streets inside the mainly Shiite district. In late April, a pair of suicide bombers killed 71 people outside the district’s Imam Musa Kadhim shrine.

Locals reacted angrily to the sight of the wall being erected. “There is more than one military unit in Kadhimiya. How come they can’t protect the city,” said Kamal Mehdi, a Kadhimiya resident. Mehdi worried the wall will be bad for the district’s markets. “Kadhimiya as a commercial center is finished . . . Will you come to Kadhimiya when there is no place to park and you spend a long time waiting in an endless line of cars in the summer heat?”

Zakariya, a 27-year-old pilgrim visiting the Imam Musa Kadhim shrine, also grew sad at the sight of walls being erected yet again. “I will think twice before I come here again. They are killing the city,” he said.

-- Usama Redha

From Babylon & Beyond: Observations from Iraq, Iran, Israel, the Arab world and beyond

For more, go to latimes.com/babylon

FABULOUS FORUM

John Daly, always colorful, is back

John Daly is back playing on the PGA Tour after a six-month suspension and adding another dimension to his colorful, if controversial, history.

Daly, suspended after allegedly being found drunk outside a bar, has lost 61 pounds (thanks to lap-band surgery) and is hoping to resurrect a tour career that includes two major championships.

He has been playing on the European Tour during his suspension and has been wearing trousers that make the colorful double-knits of the ‘70s look positively understated.

He’s playing in the St. Jude Classic in Memphis, Tenn., this weekend.

-- Mike James

From The Fabulous Forum: The who, what, where, when, why -- and why not -- of L.A. sports

For more, go to latimes.com/fabulousforum