Vinyl Sales Have Dropped 33% in 2024

After vinyl sales saw a significant rise earlier in the decade decade, Billboard’s latest music consumption report reveals a 33% decline in record sales this year

Compared to last year’s music consumption data, vinyl sales have fallen from 34.9 million units in 2023 to just 23.3 million in 2024. It’s not just vinyl either: CDs and digital album sales have also dropped in 2024, with CDs falling 19.5% and digital albums down by 8.3% from where they were in 2023. All told, album sales across the board are down by 23%, decreasing from 75.5 million units in 2023 to 57.5 million units in 2024

There are some notable increases from last year; for one, vinyl is still outpacing CDs, so the revival of collecting and spinning records hasn’t died out completely. Meanwhile, audio on-demand streams have increased by 7% from 2023, and catalog releases (albums or songs that were released over 18 months ago) were streamed more than current ones this year.

As the audio business platform Headphonesty suggests, the drop in vinyl sales has less to do with the relevance of the medium and much more to do with the rising costs of vinyl records. Inflation, higher interest rates, steep rises to the general cost of living has strained economic mobility, and buying multiple $40+ vinyl records — not to mention box sets and reissues, which can range from $50 to $200 — isn’t as financially viable to a lot of music fans in 2024. It’s also a major reason that concerts and festivals have continued to rise in price, especially with all the extra fees; It’s not that less people want to go to concerts, it’s that less people can afford to buy tickets to them.

Meanwhile, vinyl has never really been cheap to produce. Pressing the records themselves costs a significant amount of time and energy, and the pandemic demand surge led to production bottlenecks. Early 2020s records from Adele and Taylor Swift created major supply chain issues, and Jack White — who heads Third Man Records, which has their own pressing plant — called upon major labels to help alleviate these production issues by starting their own plants.

“I turn to our collegial big brothers in the music world, Sony, Universal, and Warner, and politely implore them to help alleviate this unfortunate backlog and start dedicating resources to build pressing plants themselves,” White said in 2022. “Vinyl records have exploded in the last decade, and their demand is incredibly high. A small punk band can’t get their record for eight to ten months.”

Although vinyl’s costs have been rising and the overall sales dropping, there are still plenty of opportunities to purchase records at discounted prices or during exclusive windows. Record Store Day continues to offer special-edition releases sold exclusively at independent record stores, while events like Amazon’s Prime Day feature vinyl records and box sets marked down significantly.