music news Vinyl sales increase by 6.2% in 2024

[Saintlor]

VINYL SALES PLUMMET BY 33% IN 2024

 

 

 

"According to new data, vinyl sales dropped by 33% in 2024 compared to the same time last year. This sharp decline comes as a surprise after years of the format's steady growth. In fact, the format has been seeing a fast rise in sales for almost 10 years now.

The drop in vinyl sales isn't happening in isolation. The decline is symptomatic of a broader trend affecting traditional music formats across the board.

In fact, traditional music formats are seeing declines across the board.

 

In total, album sales across all formats have nosedived by 23.8% year-over-year, tumbling from 75.5 million to 57.5 million units.

 

Meanwhile, audio-on-demand streaming continues its ascent, notching a 7.2% increase. This suggests that more listeners are turning to streaming platforms than owning physical media"

 

x

 

UPDATE:

 

Luminate Clarifies Vinyl Sales Have Not Dropped in 2024

https://consequence.net/2024/10/vinyl-sales-dropped-2024/

 

Quote

Update: A representative from Luminate, the data company that supplies information for Billboard's music consumption report, clarified that due to a recent change in the methodology for counting vinyl sales from independent retailers, it's inaccurate to compare 2024 vinyl sales to previous years. In fact, Luminate reports that U.S. vinyl sales have increased by 6.2% when comparing both 2023 and 2024 activity through Q3, exclusive of independent retail data from both years.

https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/luminate-changes-record-store-sales-count-method-billboard-charts-1235664630/

Luminate will collect independent physical music sales from StreetPulse, a music industry data provider that receives daily sales metrics directly from retailers. The data, which encompasses sales of CDs, vinyl and cassettes, will be incorporated into the physical sales data Luminate already collects directly from other stores.

[RideOrDie]

that's because lana didn't drop an alboom this year

 

[Draper.]

Infinite variants made it uncool.

[americanlife]

Too many variants of albums that no one asked for (Walmart and UO's unnecessary pressings of random soundtracks and 2000s Disney albums.) and more people could be buying CDs. Plus the prices of vinyl now are getting insane.

[CherryBay]

[DonnaSpring]

Taylor made them uncool 

[Uncatena]

couldn't possibly the INSANE prices during a corp-controlled "recession"

[ChooseyLover]

It's such an overrated physical format if you ask me. CDs >>>

Edited October 14 by ChooseyLover

[aotearoa]

aint nobody got money for that

[Anthinos]

Streaming is simply very convenient and saves money. I've always enjoyed collecting albums, but I haven't bought any physical albums or vinyls for years now. They just take up unnecessary space and many western albums in particular are often very boring compared to Kpop albums.

[Saintlor]

There is no feeling of scarcity with buying limited edition and variants.

 

I never rush to buy variants/limited editions anymore because I'm always certain they will be restocked, and then by the time they're restocked I don't care anymore  

Edited October 14 by Saintlor

[Burn]

do people actually listen to them or do most buy it just for aesthetic? i guess a lot of people are feeling the pinch with rising costs of everything so they're cutting out non-essentials like this.

[EDEJtheArtist]

I've been collecting vinyls for you but the prices are getting out of control there's no reason single LPS should be $50

[Dancehall Queen]

The bubble burst. No shade to my flop faves but tons of really small artists are dropping 10+ variants… for who

[wish]

That's disappointing to hear - vinyl sales had shown so much growth and promise in the last few years…

 

Prices are getting insane and people are becoming exhausted by the excessive amount of variants. Something needs to change.

[itshyolee]

Not surprised because they're expensive as hell and some artists like to drop 20928282 variants.

 

CDs have better audio quality anyways

[Beyonnaise]

As someone who actually listens to vinyl, I've definitely pared back my purchases this year: HMHAS, TTPD and Short N Sweet, and a few of my indie faves like Vampire Weekend and Goldie Boutilier. Prices are getting crazy and I felt burned out after pandemic buying so much in 2020-2022.

[BrokenMachine]

Not vinyls having their own bubble and it exploding already 

[Skestina]

1 minute ago, itshyolee said:

Not surprised because they're expensive as hell and some artists like to drop 20928282 variants.

 

CDs have better audio quality anyways

suddenly we have an expert here

 

[GentleEarthquake]

I love to see it

[shimind]

Buying physicals just to fill up the land fills never made sense to me. streaming is the present and future get used to it

[Uncatena]

28 minutes ago, ChooseyLover said:

It's such an overrated physical format if you ask me. CDs >>>

when I made the switch from collecting vinyl (which meant buying one or two albums I liked per month at most) to collecting CDs (sometimes getting 20 used CDs for 50 bucks) I was so happy lmao. And while vinyl is no doubt a gorgeous physical format, there is also something about the all-cardboard packaging that makes them extremely fragile. if a CD case breaks, you can literally replace it. 

 

im not trying to persuade anyone from switching, any physical media collecting is dope buT I do think CDs have become extremely underrated as a physical music format since the vinyl boom.

[TeemoR]

flash in the pan, was just a trend. 

[khalyan]

It’s all because of price. 
 

When I first got into record collecting, I could go on Amazon and get copies of my faves for $10 or $15. Now, you’re lucky if you can get a single LP for less than $35. 
 

I used to buy records all the time, even if I wasn’t familiar with the artist as much because it was affordable and easy to discover. Now, I am only buying 3-4 records the whole year because the price prevents me from collecting anything but my absolute faves. 

[Sabrina Carpenter]

i'm a vinyl collector and it's not because of the variants.

 

it's the price. a 2lp vinyl used to cost $40 in my country and now it would cost me $80 for a single lp.

 

i stopped collecting for that sole reason.

 

Edited October 14 by Sabrina Carpenter