Luminate data as recently presented by Billboard.
After more than a decade of rising sales for the vinyl format, sales have fallen off a cliff this year with an estimated plummet of more than 30% year-over-year. What’s going on?
Luminate data reveals a 33.3% drop in vinyl sales for the year 2024 compared to 2023. That’s a drop from 34.9 million units in 2023 to just 23.3 million sold in 2024. Luminate data for other formats reveal this isn’t a vinyl-only problem, either. CD sales have fallen 19.5%, while sales of digital albums have dropped 8.3%. Album sales across all formats have dropped 23.8% year-over-year—dropping from 75.5M sold in 2023 to just 57.5M sold in 2024.
While the decline across physical media could be attributed to lack of consumer demand amid wallet tightening, the drop for vinyl is precipitous. While there’s some speculation here on what’s causing the drop, one answer could be higher vinyl prices as the format gained steam among collectors. Cost of living across the United States has soared in recent years, which could make spending $40 to $50 per record an untenable purchase for some consumers. That’s especially true when the same album can be streamed online for the price of a monthly Spotify or Apple Music subscription.
Digital Music News has covered the expansion of vinyl production in recent years, but bottlenecks in the creation process lead to higher prices for consumers. Supply chain issues exacerbated by the pandemic have led to higher manufacturing costs for vinyl producers—which means there’s not a lot of give in the end price consumers pay for a vinyl record. The rising cost of raw materials like PVC is also a contributing factor, with higher production costs passed on to consumers.
The vinyl format benefited from the cultural trend of nostalgia for older formats, with many music lovers seeking out records as the ‘authentic’ listening experience. But the trend of buying vinyls of albums may be starting a downward spiral as casual listeners opt for streaming and music collectors become more selective about the albums they’re purchasing each year as costs rise.
Vinyl fatigue may also be a factor for some consumers. For example, Taylor Swift has released 34 variants of The Tortured Poets Department, each with exclusive tracks, album art, or acoustic versions of songs. The intent there is to get superfans to collect all of these vinyl releases to complete their collection—but fans may be getting burned out on re-purchasing a vinyl album at $50 a pop for a single bonus track. Despite the plummeting vinyl sales across the board, Taylor Swift did come out on top in Luminate’s mid-year report.
The Tortured Poets Department sold 2.474 million copies throughout the first half of 2024. Meanwhile, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft took second place with around 306,000 copies sold and Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter takes third with 257,000 sales. Luminate data says the trend of physical album variants really kicked off about four years ago—we may be seeing the beginnings of consumer fatigue to these variations. Billie Eilish has notably spoken out against the practice, calling it ‘wasteful’ in an interview with Billboard earlier this year.
