Vinyl is booming, so much that the U.K. government has announced that they are set to include vinyl records in its official basket of goods used to track inflation.
in Australia specialist audio dealers are reporting record demand for premium record players with consumers paying up to $100 for albums. I remember paying $10 for an album back in the 1970’s.
At JB Hi Fi both record players and albums are flying out the door with double digit growth last year.
In the USA vinyl record sales have grown 14.2% during the past year with Taylor Swift records delivering growth according to data from Billboard Magazine.
Last year 49.61 million vinyl records were sold in 2023, compared to sales of 43.46 million in 2022.
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In the UK 2023 year-on-year growth was 11.7% to 5.9 million units (up to week 51), delivering the highest annual sales figures for the format since 1990.
That’s well up on the 2.9% growth recorded in the previous year.
Analysts claim that physical media is making a legitimate comeback and that demand for CD’s, CD players and to a lesser degree cassettes is set to continue to grow.
Luminate, an entertainment data and tracking company, just released a report that included a list of the top ten vinyl records sold in 2023.
At number one is Taylor Swift. One of the most successful musical artists in the world, Swift releases all of her music on physical media. Her re-release of her album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) sold over a million copies.
The fact, that 5 of the top 10 LPs in 2023, where Taylor Swift albums indicates that a younger audience is taking to vinyl and record players.
By the way, fun fact #1, 1989 (Taylor’s version) sold 580,000 records in the first six days after release.
According to Luminate, that made that week the biggest vinyl sales week since they began tracking sales in 1991. The same album was also the number one selling CD, with 800,000 physical discs sold.
The UK government’s decision to return records to their charts allows it to calculate the rate of inflation, according to the Office for National Statistics.
There are currently 744 items that go into this basket, but the return of vinyl strikes a chord of nostalgia with many, who grew up on the musical format and whose week was complete if it finished with the purchase of a record from ones pay.
Vinyl sales today is mostly for records that play at 33 revolutions per minute, rather than the 7-inch single, which typically plays at 45 revolutions per minute.
The return of this product is the equivalent of hoteliers stating they are buying a hotel for a long-term hold, a 33-rpm acquisition, not a 45-rpm one.
