Vinyl records had their time years ago until CDs came out. Fast forward to now – the world has been digitized to the point where most media can be reached with a few clicks. This makes it easier to stream music, and people may prefer that form of listening. But in recent years there has been a shift.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, in 2023, revenues from vinyl records grew 10% to $1.4 billion and accounted for 71% of physical format revenues.
There is a change in physical format sales and vinyl records have been making a comeback. This spike has started since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to RIAA’s 2020 year-end report. Vinyl surpassed CD sales and made up most of the total physical media revenue – $626 million for vinyl sales, compared to $483 million in CD sales.
In a 2022 report by the RIAA, physical record formats continued to grow, totaling about $1.7 billion in revenues. On a post on Medium, Mitch Glazier, RIAA chairman and CEO, said vinyl is cementing its role as a fixture of the modern music marketplace.
Chris Khraish, co-owner of The Spin Coffee and Vinyl, has been operating the store for three and a half years with his father, Nassif Khraish. They opened their shop when vinyl records began to trend. Chris said, “I think we opened at right around the time that this shift was happening where modern bands were putting out more on vinyl, and it became a thing for younger people.”
Chris said he noticed younger people coming into the store and indulging in vintage formats, specifically vinyl, contributing to this growth in vinyl sales.
According to Forbes, the most sold vinyl record in 2023 was “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” selling more than 1 million copies in only a few months of its release.
Although younger listeners invest in newer artists’ vinyl records, they are also starting to enjoy older artists and genres. As they appreciate the older format of listening, they are also appreciating the music that was once only available in vinyl format, Chris said. “They’ll grab a Taylor Swift album, or even a Twenty One Pilots album, or something modern,” he said. “But they’re also grabbing a lot of Simon and Garfunkel, a lot of Fleetwood Mac, a lot of classic things.”
Chris said he believes the reason vinyl has become so popular again is because music has become easier to listen to. He said people want to be able to display, hold and own their music. “If I were to say, ‘Look how much I love David Bowie,’ and showed you my Spotify playlist, that’s not as cool as showing you my shelf full of David Bowie records. So I think that plays a big part of it.”
Chris said he sees a positive result from this sudden change and hopes this makes music something listeners can own again, no matter the circumstance.
“Artists can come and go,” Chris said. “They can renegotiate contracts [and] you lose access to a lot of music. By vinyl coming back, a lot of us will be able to listen to that whether we have the internet or whether they are arguing with their contract lawyers.”
G.I. Sanders, owner of NTX Vinyl, said he saw these patterns begin to spike around 2020. Sanders said he has seen numerous people, especially younger people, begin to collect vinyl records and become interested in them. He said, “It really wasn’t a thing, from a mainstream standpoint at all … going back 10 years ago.” Sanders said that it has been great to see how over the past three to five years the number of young collectors has increased as they have become more exposed to vinyl.
Sanders said as people go to record stores and search for vinyl records, they are met with the opportunity to sift through thousands of other types of music. Sanders also said he believes that because everything has become digital, it has created a newfound appreciation for physical things.
There is a nostalgia and coolness factor to vinyl, Sanders said, and when people spend their money on vinyl, they get to physically care for it and experience it. “I think that’s the main thing is just people finding an appreciation in something that’s physical because there’s just not that much left in our world that is that way,” he said. As the world becomes more technological, more people seek to grasp onto the original way of listening to music.
Sanders said he hopes this increase in popularity for vinyl allows more people to become inspired to engage with this format of music and really value and cherish it. He said, “If it brings people closer to the music and gets them to appreciate the music on any level, I think that’s a great thing. … To me, it’s the next best thing to getting to see the artists live in concert. It is not that close to the artists, but at least it’s a physical thing that you could take care of and collect and kind of cherish over the years.”
