The internet seemed to crash yesterday with vinyl sales falling a staggering 33% between 2023 and 2024. Statistics originally reported. Advertising panel through a data company Luminateand spawned headlines like “Vinyl sales down 33⅓ as greed threatens to kill revival” and “Vinyl sales down 33% year-over-year; What’s going on?” Except vinyl sales weren’t actually down 33%.
According to an update from ConsequenceLuminate just changed the methodology by which they count vinyl sales from independent retailers. Luminate also reports that vinyl sales in the U.S. are up 6.2% year-over-year through the third quarter of 2023 and 2024.
So you go. vinyl continues its incredible rise. Whether or not those vinyl buyers actually have a turntable is another story (literally), but as long as everyone is happy and supporting the artists, that’s all that matters.
Unfortunately, vinyl was the only real winner when it came to year-over-year comparisons. Disc sales are down a whopping 19.5% from 26.8 million sales in 2023 to 21.6 million in 2024. Digital sales also fell 8.3 percent from 14.4 million to 13.2 million. Inflows are doing well, with an average increase of 6.9% between 2023 and 2024. On-demand voice streams grow from 976.4 billion in 2023 to 1 trillion in 2024.
Anyway, I personally support the “Bring back the CDs” movement. The motion currently consists of me typing the previous sentence. Join me in my dating revolution!
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