Recorded revenue attributable to U.S. vinyl sales improved by 17 percent year over year during H1 2024, per a new report. Photo Credit: Jace & Afsoon
Who says vinyl’s nearly two-decade commercial resurgence is slowing? The format achieved double-digit stateside sales-volume growth during 2024’s opening half after turning in a single-digit expansion in the same category throughout all of 2023.
That data point comes from the RIAA’s newly released mid-year report, which charts the performance of the U.S. recorded music space in H1 2024. As many know, revenue from vinyl sales has improved in the States for 17 consecutive years, besides managing to grow in a number of different markets.
But last year, the RIAA identified relatively modest year-over-year volume growth of 6.6 percent for the format, with 43.2 million units having generated around $1.35 billion (itself up 10.3 percent) at estimated retail value. Importantly, the latter is, as its name spells out, just an estimate – not necessarily the price that the products ultimately fetched when bought by customers.
On the other hand, CDs, which have been surrendering commercial ground for a while now, saw their own U.S. sales volume dip by 1.9 percent last year to 37 million units despite an 11.3 percent rise in revenue to $537.1 million, according to the 2023 report.
Interestingly, however, the stateside boost attributable to vinyl for H1 2024 was also accompanied by a 3.3 percent improvement for CDs in terms of units moved (16.8 million).
Though the exact driving factors behind fans’ heightened interest in CDs is unclear, it should be emphasized that the format’s estimated retail value sales only grew by a modest 0.3 percent to $236.7 million.
Vinyl’s Q1 and Q2 2024 growth was more uniform, at a 10.7 percent hike in units sold (24.3 million) and a 17 percent revenue jump ($739.9 million), the analysis shows. Of course, we’re also unable to say precisely what drove these material increases and whether the factors will fuel purchases consistently moving forward.
But Taylor Swift’s over 34 distinct versions (across all formats) of The Tortured Poets Department, the artist’s first non-rerecorded album since 2022, presumably had something to do with the spikes. After debuting on April 19th, the work managed to sell almost 860,000 vinyl units by the month’s conclusion.
Consequently, with Swift presumably not planning to release another original project this year – the surprise Evermore did, however, drop just a handful of months after Folklore in 2020 – it’ll be interesting to monitor vinyl’s U.S. showing during the back half of the year.
Also worth tracking is the performance of vinyl in different markets, where, as mentioned, it’s also finding an increasingly large number of buyers. The trend extends to nations like Italy, where vinyl posted 16 percent H1 2024 revenue growth, as well as countries with milder vinyl sales buildouts. Germany, for instance, experienced a tamer 5.4 percent rise in domestic vinyl revenue throughout the first half of the year.
