An Associated Press article on cnn.com reports that a fortuitous error has led Fred Meyer, the Pacific Northwest retail chain, to feature vinyl records in its stores.

The report goes on to say that with a clumsy stroke of the keyboard, a Fred Meyer employee inadvertently ordered the vinyl edition of R.E.M.’s recent release, Accelerate, instead of the CD-DVD version intended for a number of stores.

Some stores, the report says, sent the records back but others decided to put them on the shelves for sale. Twenty sold the first day. Consequently, management at Fred Meyer, which is owned by Kroger Co., decided to test vinyl sales at 60 stores across Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. The response was clearly positive—Fred Meyer plans to stock vinyl in all of its stores that sell music staring in July, according to the report.

But consumers aren’t purchasing vinyl at only Fred Meyer, and it is not the only retailer to observe the quasi-resurgence of a format that lost ubiquity in all but a few circles at the dawn of the CD era.

The AP cites the Recording Industry Association of America as reporting that manufacturers’ shipments of LPs increased to 1.3 million—more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007—at the same time as shipments of CDs decreased 17 percent.

The report goes on to say that Best Buy is also testing vinyl sales at select stores and amazon.com continues to sell vinyl through its dedicated store, www.amazon.com/vinyl. Furthermore, the report notes that major labels have been recently pressing more records.

“It’s not just a nostalgia thing,â€? said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer, in the AP report. “The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound.â€?