A dramatic increase has been seen in the revenue from the sale of vinyl records. Though CD sales and digital downloads have decreased significantly, the increase of vinyl in the market has allowed for the overall sale of physical music media to decrease by 0.5 percent according to Pitchfork.
Vinyl sales saw a rise of 29.9 percent over the past year, from $479.5 million to $619.6 million in 2020. A September report from RIAA says that for the first time since the 1980s, vinyl sales have been at higher level than the sales of CDs and have been growing in sales for fourteen years. This popularity of the vintage medium is reflected in new opportunities for artists to make their music available on vinyl, such as Bandcamp’s addition of an in-house pressing service to allow artists to more easily satisfy demand for the vinyl trend.
The decrease of sales of other physical music products is no surprise within the context of the massive growth of streaming, which rose 13.4 percent over the last year and composes 83 percent of the total revenue of the music industry. In the last quarter of 2019 alone, the big three labels gained an income of $2.26 billion, and Sony Music gained almost $2 Billion in the first half of 2020 from streaming revenue.
Photo credit: Sharon Alagna
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