While streaming continues to completely dominated the music landscape, physical media is continuing its resurgence and vinyl is the new top dog.
In 2022, the near-100 year old format defeated CD sales for the first time in 35-years according to figures from the Recording Industry Association of America.
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The end-of-year round-up said sales of physical media rose by 4% during 2022, but vinyl did most of the heavy lifting with 71% of that revenue. Of course, records are generally more expensive than their compact disc counterparts, but the numbers don’t lie: 41 million vinyl records vs 33 million CDs.
If it weren’t for widepsread shortages – largely caused by Taylor Swift devouring the raw materials for umpteen Midnights pressings – the numbers may have been greater.
The report reads: “Revenues from physical music formats continued to grow after their remarkable resurgence in 2021. Total physical revenues of $1.7 billion were up 4% versus the prior year. Revenues from vinyl records grew 17% to $1.2 billion – the sixteenth consecutive year of growth – and accounted for 71% of physical format revenues. For the first time since 1987, vinyl albums outsold CDs in units (41 million vs 33 million). After a 2021 rebound versus the Covid impacted 2020, revenues from CDs fell 18% to $483 million in 2022.”
The “other” section in this equation is likely to be dominated by the cassette tape format, which appears to be over its little renaissance compared to a couple of years back when they were once again popular.
Elsewhere, the report once again saw a rise in people paying for music subscriptions, reaching 92 million in 2022, up from 84m in 2021. Growth does appear to be stalling a little now though, after larger year-on-year increases between 2018 and 2020.
Digital download revenue continued to fall and was down 20% in 2022.
