Vinyl has become wildly popular over the past nearly two decades, but growth seems to be slowing down.
According to a report by Billboard, vinyl sales only grew 4.2% between 2021 and 2022 (from 41.72 million in 2021 to 43.46 million vinyl in 2022). For reference, vinyl sales grew 46.2% between 2019 and 2020, and 51.4% between 2020 and 2021. So yes, vinyl is still massively popular, but growth is certainly leveling off after years of basically a straight line up.
A few other interesting takeaways from the Billboard report include:
- Vinyl made up 43.4% of all physical media sales in 2022, or 43.46 million of 79.89 million total physical album purchases
- 48% of all vinyl sold in the U.S. were bought at independent record stores, while 32.8% were bought online
- Rock music made up 51.83% of all vinyl albums sold in 2022
- Unsurprisingly, the most-sold vinyl record of 2022 was Taylor Swift's Midnights with 945,000 copies. So metal has a little catching up to do, yeah?
Vinyl sales in the U.S. broke a record in the final weeks of 2022 as they hit an all time high in the week ending in December 22, with 2.232 million records being sold. The previous record was set during the week ending in December 23, 2021, where 2.115 million records were sold.
