When the indie kids fought to "save" vinyl records from extinction in the early 90s, I doubt they knew that five years later Japan would become the world's largest market for analog discs. There was moderate growth up until 1998, but suddenly in 1999, the market went "off the wall" and sales more than doubled up to 3.6 billion yen ($33 million). Most of the growth was in domestic releases (ie, they were pressing both Japanese dance music and JPOP onto collectible vinyl.) Vinyl sales for Western music grew only moderately, but it is unclear from the data whether this only means Japanese-pressings of Western music or sales of records from Western labels.

But by the next year, vinyl sales were already down by almost one-half. Now in 2003, vinyl sales are even less than in 1994. Everyone apparently realized very quickly that you can't do anything with turntables besides listen to other people's music and "playing" their fancy "instrument" required going out and buying records with only one song for $10 a pop. The quick peak of the numbers show that the whole record boom was nothing but a short-lived fad.