The internet seemingly went into a tailspin yesterday over vinyl sales dropping a shocking 33% between 2023 and 2024. The stats were originally reported by Billboard via the data company Luminate, and caused headlines like "Vinyl sales drop 33⅓ as greed threatens to ruin the revival" and "Vinyl Sales Have Plummeted 33% Year Over Year — What's Going On?" Except vinyl sales didn't actually drop 33%.
According to an update from Consequence, Luminate simply chnged the methodology by which they count vinyl sales from independent retailers. Luminate further notes that vinyl sales in the U.S. increased by 6.2% when comparing 2023 and 2024 through Q3 year over year.
So there you go – vinyl continues its incredible climb. Whether or not those vinyl buyers actually own a turntable is another story (literally), but as long as everyone's happy and supporting the artists, that's all that matters.
Sadly, vinyl was the only real winner when it came to year-over-year comparisons. CD sales dropped a whopping 19.5% from 26.8 million sales in 2023 to 21.6 million sales in 2024. Digital sales also dipped 8.3% from 14.4 million sales to 13.2 million. Streaming is doing just fine, as it the medium rose 6.9% between 2023 and 2024. Audio On Demand streams rose from 976.4 billion in 2023 to a tidy 1 trillion in 2024.
Anyway, I'm personally backing the "Bring Back CDs" movement. The movement currently consists of me typing out that previous sentence. Join in me in my dated revolution.
