Almost 800,000 records have already been sold in the first nine months of this year

Vinyl is the format that just doesn't know when to quit, and through sheer resilience and a bit of hipster credo, vinyl album sales are on course to sail past the million mark in the U.K.

The British Phonograph Institute (BPI), the body that tracks album and single sales, said its figures showed that almost 800,000 vinyl albums had been sold in the U.K. for the first nine months of 2014, significantly ahead of last year's nine month total of 780,674.

The BPI said that vinyl sales could pass the million mark this year, the first time that has happened since 1996, when 1,083,206 vinyl albums were sold.

A spokesperson for the BPI said: "Vinyl may once have been considered a byproduct of a bygone era, but it is now well and truly a flourishing format making a comeback in a digital age. In an increasingly-digitized world, it appears that music fans still crave a tangible product that gives them original artwork, high audio quality and purity of sound."

Vinyl's comeback has been attributed to its "cool" factor and sales have been helped by strong support from retailers like Urban Outfitters, which is now the world's biggest seller of vinyl. The format's return to health in the U.K. is all the more remarkable as in 2007 the format reached its nadir with only 205,000 vinyl albums sold for the whole year. In September 2014, 112,000 vinyl albums were sold in what has been the year's busiest month.

2014's biggest seller is AM by Arctic Monkeys followed by Jack White's Lazaretto.

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