John Darko
Is the vinyl revival party over? New figures from Billboard suggest it might be, at least in the USA. According to the magazine’s Market Watch segment, 23.3M vinyl records have been sold to date in the USA in 2024. That seems like a decent number…until we look at the sales figures for the same period in 2023: 34.9M. Doing the math, that’s a whopping 33% drop.
The vinyl revival has been going gangbusters for at least twelve years so it stands to reason that sales would eventually plateau — but the Billboard data suggests that the Stateside music market has undergone the mother of all corrections. Either the economy is biting harder than expected or consumers have finally had enough of paying between US$25 and US$40 (on average) for a vinyl record…OR there was something funky with Billboard’s calculations.
And there was.
Here is Ryan Mitrovich from the Vinyl Alliance:
“This is simply a false statistic. Essentially, Billboard irresponsibly reported these figures without the important caveat that 2024 numbers can’t be compared YoY due to Luminate’s change in its model (which was extensively reported on earlier this year). We’ve corrected the narrative here. I’ve spoken with Luminate directly, who shared the actual +6.2% stat with me.”
And this from Mitrovich’s LinkedIn post:
“This report, and the various articles, are missing a crucial piece of context (something we wrote at length about earlier this year): Beginning in 2024, Luminate (Billboard’s data source) made a major change to the way it reports data on physical media sales—a change which makes accurate YoY comparisons not possible using its changed model.
The details around this change in methodology have been extensively reported on—by Billboard no less! (See: https://lnkd.in/dFySdHzs) Frustratingly, the failure to properly explain such a significant and unrepresentative figure has now led to a false narrative making its way around the internet. One that has the potential to be seriously damaging to our industry.
The bottom line? US vinyl sales through the first three quarters of 2024 are actually UP 6.2% — as reported by Luminate’s readjusted model which accounts for the previously mentioned changes.”
Further information: Billboard
