The Pop Corporation

If you’ve been reading the music press this week, there was some alarm or peevish glee (depending on where you were doing your reading) that vinyl sales had dropped.

A Billboard piece stated that vinyl sales dropped by 33%, which is not insignificant. That’s selling 34.9 million units, down to 23.3 million in 2024.

Are the young people too lame to support bands? Is the world in such a bad place that no-one can afford fun things? Who is to blame and who amongst us with sizeable record collections can gloat about the whole thing?

Well, hold your horses there, Neddy!

The company that provided the data which was used in the various pieces have had to clarify something. The people in question – Luminate – have sent out a representative, and clarified that actually, there’s been a change in the way that vinyl sales are counted from independent record shops and retailers. Actually, this is a pretty boring accountancy piece, rather than the state of popular culture.

What has actually happened is that, in the US, Luminate reports that record sales have increased by 6.2%. In the UK, it was already being reported that vinyl sales were still on an upward keel, so there you go.

With all the talk of the expense of records, the cost to produce them, the artists who release too many variants and all that stuff – it seems that people young and old are still finding a lot to love about hanging around in record shops, ferreting around online for vinyl, and having things in their homes that make them look cool rather than having everything on their phones and laptops.

It’s great news! Records are fun and, every time someone tells you that vinyl is in trouble, remind yourself that CDs were meant to kill it off, but didn’t.

All hail anyone who buys physical albums and keeps nice record shops open and encourages record labels to release new artists. It’s an ecosystem that’s really important, and one that Spotify and Apple aren’t at all contributing to.