Vinyls on the Rise! Highest Sales in Decades.

In the last decade we saw a resurgence of the physical music art form through Vinyl and CD from the digital age of streaming looking to make them extinct. However, despite the best effort of Spotify, Apple, Amazon and others, Vinyl and CD are alive and well!

In the days of our parents, the compact disc (CD) was the leading format for people to listen to music. Being smaller, easier to transport and including more songs, it was the logical step in music evolution. So why has streaming services not done what CD has done to the vinyl record, and why is it coming back?

Mike Ward, of Badlands Records in Cheltenham, said “there’s a million different factors. The main reason I think is the products are considered ‘sexy’. He added “People still actually want to own something. [About vinyl record] It’s one of the biggest formats, the nicest formats, the original! There’s a bit of a ritual, you have to sit down, put the record on, listen to 20 minutes maximum on ones side…it demands attention! And people prefer the sound of it!”

Mike also mentioned that there is still a market for the sale of CDs due to their smaller scale, and that people will want to play them in the car. “There’s also quite big, healthy second hand markets. There’s still a healthy interest for CDs, either because of space, because its what they are used to.”

Vinyl Record outsold CD sales for the first time in almost 30 years, by roughly £18million; with record sales hitting £116.8million, and CDs £98.3million.

In 2023, vinyl saw an increase of 11.7% hitting 5.9million units being sold in the UK (statistics released by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI)). The popularity of ‘indie’ artists such as Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and The Rolling Stones have helped promote the sales of physical copies of records. Last year, the most popular album sold was Swift’s ‘1989 (Taylors Version)’ selling over 78,000 copies in the UK.

CDs did see an increase in sales of 2% hitting £126.2million, the highest since 2001. However, the actual number of physical discs sold has fallen by 6.9% since 2015, suggesting that the increase in price of CDs is influencing peoples desire to buy them.