According to consequence.net, after vinyl sales saw a rise last year, Billboard’s latest music consumption report has revealed a 33 percent decline in record sales this year. Compared to last year’s music consumption data, vinyl sales fell from 34.9 million units in 2023 to just 23.3 million in 2024.
It is not just vinyl either because CDs and digital album sales also dropped this year, with CDs falling 19.5 percent and digital albums down by 8.3 percent from where they were in 2023. As a whole, album sales across the board are down by 23 percent, which decreases from 75.5 million units sold in 2023 to 57.5 million units this year.
There have been some notable increases from last year such as vinyl is still outpacing CDs, so the revival of collecting and spinning records has not died out completely. Meanwhile, audio on-demand streams has increased by 7 percent from 2023 and catalog releases, albums or songs that were released over 18 months ago, were streamed more than current ones this year.
As the audio business platform Headphonesty suggests, the drop in vinyl sales has less to do with the relevance of the medium and much more to do with economic factors. Inflation, higher interest rates and the increased cost of living have made purchasing multiple $40 plus vinyl records, along with box sets and reissues priced between $50 and $200, less affordable for many music fans in 2024.
It is the same reason why many music festivals have struggled to move tickets this summer because it is not that fewer people want to attend but that fewer can afford the tickets. Also, vinyl has never really been cheap to produce. Pressing the records themselves costs a significant amount of time and energy and the pandemic’s demand surge led to production bottlenecks. Production costs have further increased due to inflation.
Although vinyl’s costs have been rising and the overall sales are dropping, there are still plenty of opportunities to purchase records at discounted prices or during exclusive windows. Record Store Day continues to offer special-edition releases sold exclusively at independent record stores, while events like Amazon’s Prime Day feature vinyl records and box sets have been marked down significantly.
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