Arts & Culture Business Entertainment
Vinyl record sales keep climbing
By Matthew Adams
Ask Discog’s marketing vice president why he collects vinyl records and he’ll give a fast reply: “The music … defines who it is that I am and the music that means something to me. I want to own it.”
More customers buy music downloads and streaming music but the audience for vinyl continues to grow. “Since 2016, vinyl album sales have increased from 13.1 million to 49.6 million in 2023, a growth of nearly 300% over the last eight years,” according to data from Luminate, which tracks music industry trends.
Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash
Big box stores are contributing to the ever-growing vinyl consumption but independent record stores have been at the forefront of this resurgence. Luminate Insights Music 360 2024 survey of people purchasing vinyl albums over the prior 12 months found that 37% bought from an independent store, instead of from such chain retailers as Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble and Urban Outfitters.
Max Salpetrier, a veteran disc jockey, has observed trends in buying vinyl. “Whenever I go look at [Target’s] collections, I see young kids buying these records, you know, common pop artists, and they don’t even have a turntable. They’re buying it more for the art and exclusivity of having something.”
Owner Travis Klein of Human Head Records in Brookly, explained what genres and artists his customers mainly were buying. “I mean, American rock, jazz, soul. You know, like, there are elements that are [of] higher collectable value, like, Brazilian records … artists like Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac and Gil Scott-Heron.”
He added that, “Most people in general have a listening span of about 14 to 25 years old, which is when that affects them most. I learned this as a [disc] jockey. If you play in a room for those people at that age … that will hit them.”
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was instrumental in the vinyl renaissance. With many people stuck at home, the interest in records grew. More than 400 million albums sold from 2020 to 2024, representing a .4% spike, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.