FEATURE:
Physical Attraction
PHOTO CREDIT: ALTEREDSNAPS/Pexels
The Continued Boom of Vinyl Sales in the U.S.
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EVEN though it is not a new trend…
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant
there is allure for and demand of physical music formats. I think part of the appeal comes from the album covers in addition to the tactile nature of the product. People get to own something real and ensuring. Vinyl is especially popular, as you get this fantastic physical album that will last for years. Whilst there has been criticism that many legacy albums have taken too much focus. They sell very well, but that is not to say that new artists are unable to get a foothold. You can see why classic albums are selling on vinyl. New listeners discover the album and want to preserve it this way. People want to replace older copies. I don’t think that it is the case that old classic albums rule vinyl charts. If you look at the vinyl charts and the best-selling so far this year, there are plenty of new albums. That is encouraging to see! The Guardian reported how vinyl sales in the U.S. are continuing to boom:
“Vinyl sales in the US are up 21.7% for the first half of 2023 over the same period last year, according to a new music industry report.
The vinyl resurgence is itself not new – 2022 marked the 17th consecutive year that sales of vinyl records rose, according to Luminate’s music midyear report. But the growth rate this year has reassured experts that the vinyl market did not hit a natural plateau after surging during the pandemic, which caused a 108% increase in 2021.
The data company’s findings, released on Wednesday and first reported by Variety, also includes figures on Americans’ consumption of non-English language music (40% of US listeners have non-English music in their diet), as well as charts of the best-selling and streaming albums of the year so far.
The company found that other formats beyond vinyls, including compact discs, did not see a decline in sales from the previous year. But nothing is even close to the numbers from streaming, which doesn’t seem to have a growth ceiling in sight. On-demand audio and video streaming numbers were up 15% in the US, and double internationally at 30.8%.
The international market with the most streaming growth was Asia, with a 107% increase in audio and video streams over the same period last year. Latin America was up 70%, while Europe was up 57%.
Taylor Swift’s Midnights, which was released last October, is the best-selling vinyl LP of year so far, with 251,000 copies sold in 2023. She leads a top 10 list including Lana Del Rey, supergroup Boygenius and Melanie Martinez as well as record-store staples Fleetwood Mac (Rumours has sold 103,000 copies this year) and Michael Jackson. The top 10 best-selling CDs were all K-pop groups with the exception of Midnights, which landed at No 6 with 176,000 units sold.
Swift topped the list for pure album sales, with 607,000 copies sold in the past six months. But the biggest album and single this year on the Billboard year-to-date charts, which factors in streaming numbers, belongs to country artist Morgan Wallen, for his 36-song album One Thing At a time and blockbuster single Last Night.
Luminate found that direct-to-consumer sales were up more than vinyl alone – 26% to 21.7% – demonstrating an audience of devoted fans willing to buy music direct from artists’ websites. Traditional physical album sales as a whole, including vinyl, CD and cassettes, were up 13.3%. CDs alone, long dismissed as dead, were up 3.8% over this time last year. Overall album sales trended up by 7.9%, with the surge in vinyl purchases counterbalanced by the slow returns of paid digital downloads.
There was a daunting 112,000 new tracks released a day so far this year, up from 93,400 per day over the same period last year. The vast majority of these are independent releases, with only 3.3% of total track releases coming from major distributors.
“The story of music in the first half of 2023 is defined by more empowered super fans with a growing hunger to support their favorite artists, more engagement with non-English music in the US, and more content being uploaded on a daily basis, which creates more opportunities and challenges,” said Luminate’s chief executive, Rob Jonas, in a summary to Variety.
“The key word here is ‘more’, which leads to the need for a more focused and insights-fueled understanding of worldwide music listener habits”.
When vinyl sales increase, that then leads other people to seek out the format. What are the reasons behind the continuing rose in vinyl sales? Maybe the fact streaming music denied artists of proper compensation is leading people to buy more vinyl. Earlier in the year, Music Week published an article where they theorised why vinyl sale are in such great health:
“But vinyl unit sales in 2022 increased by just 2.9% year-on-year to 5.5 million, compared to growth of 10.6% (around 500,000 units) in 2021. Nevertheless, vinyl is now at its highest level in units since 1990.
Of course, a large part of the problem is to do with supply rather than demand, with stores only able to sell LPs in the quantities made available by labels and distributors due to production capacity issues.
“The outlook for vinyl remains extremely positive,” said ERA’s Kim Bayley. “It’s worth remembering that the much talked about problems of vinyl have been a result of demand exceeding supply – there are worse problems to have. There are issues around price – arguably vinyl has gone from being underpriced to in some cases being too ambitious – but I expect these to be resolved as supply more closely aligns with demand.”
Almost half of those extra 200,000 sales in 2022 were down to Taylor Swift’s Midnights (EMI), which moved 89,163 copies on vinyl last year.
IN THIS PHOTO: Harry Styles/PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Walker for Better Homes & Gardens
Eight of the Top 10 vinyl sellers last year were from albums first released in 2022. It follows a period when catalogue was driving the growth of the format, alongside increasing streaming consumption. In 2017, just three of the year’s 10 biggest vinyl LPs were released in that year with the top sellers dominated by catalogue titles by artists including The Beatles and Pink Floyd.
“The rise in sales of catalogue albums on vinyl is a clear example of the symbiotic relationship between streaming and physical retail,” said Bayley. “People are finding and listening to classic albums on streaming services and in many cases buying - or re-buying - those albums on vinyl.
“That said, the more striking development in 2022 was the strong performance of new releases from the likes of Taylor Swift and Harry Styles on vinyl – vinyl is far from some kind of heritage format.”
Harry Styles had the overall No.1 album of 2022 with Harry’s House (Columbia), which was the No.2 vinyl release of the year (77,955 copies).
During Q4, vinyl sales were up 7.4% year-on-year with more than two million units sold in the quarter.
“The market is going to continue to be strong across 2023,” said Charles Wood, VP of market planning and sales at Sony Music UK. “We had good vinyl sales on new [Q4] releases from Bruce Springsteen and First Aid Kit plus continuing strong sales on Harry Styles.
“The backlog at some manufacturers inherited from Covid, has begun to ease, so we are much better equipped going into 2023 than we were at the turn of the last two years. We still have some strong catalogue titles yet to be re-issued or released on vinyl, for example Whitney Houston following on from the recent success of Jamiroquai”.
I do think that vinyl sales will continue to rise across the world. It is pleasing that the American market is doing so well. Any great news about vinyl is worth celebrating. I would say, even though vinyl is successful and selling well, there is still an issue around pricing. It is expensive as a format, even if you do get quite a lot for your money. To make it more accessible, the price does need to come down a bit. Ensuring there are more plants to press vinyl. In any case, encouraging news in the U.S. relating to vinyl sales is encouraging. I think that vinyl sales will continue to grow…
FOR decades more.