Take the editor: Vinyl record sales boomed. The latter trend is difficult to pin down. Collectors trying to grow their collections, music lovers who prefer the richer sounds of analog recordings, and sometimes great album art, the big discs come with all the contributions at this point. Whatever the case, the recording industry isn’t complaining.
For the first time since 1987, it recorded vinyl sales exceeded CDs. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) year-end report for 2022, analog dishes beat out their digital cousins, moving 41 million units to 33 million, respectively.
The gap is even more important when viewed from a critical perspective. Last year, consumers spent just $482.6 million on CDs versus $1.2 billion on vinyl. The old medium crammed in 71.2 percent of all physical music revenue for 2022.
thanks increase interest In vinyl records over the past several years, notched disc sales have outpaced CD revenue since 2020. However, unit shipments finally flattened this year thanks to a 17 percent increase in vinyl and an 18 percent decrease in CD sales.
However, digital media remains the top performer in the music industry. When folded across all digital formats, including broadcast, total revenue rose 6 percent to $15.9 billion in 2022, with digital media capturing 92.3 percent of the market.
The RIAA attributes the modest 6 percent gain to 8 percent growth in paid subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, which brought in more than $10 billion last year. Ad-based subscription layers and YouTube brought in another $1.8 billion.
“[Overall,] 2022 was an impressive year of “hypergrowth” that continued for more than a decade after streaming exploded on the music scene,” RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier noted. market with a strong record high of $13.3 billion.
Meanwhile, downloaded music continuous Her death spiral. Last year, the medium took in $495 million in revenue, down 20 percent year-over-year and 84 percent from its peak in 2012. On-demand music streaming has gradually cut downloads out of the picture thanks in part to the storage savings it offers mobile devices. .
Whether it’s the nostalgia of older listeners or a youthful infatuation with music technology that came along more than a century ago, it looks like vinyl records are going to hang around for far longer than anyone expected.
