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Luminate Data Music Study: Vinyl LP Makes a Comeback for Albums

Vinyl LP

By Goran VinchiPublished about a year ago 6 min read
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The 2022 Year End Music Report, a review of the year's music consumption, demographics, and other data, was issued by Luminate Data last week. The majority of the study concentrates on demographic information relevant to advertising and brand collaborations, but there are a few hidden gems that hint at an unexpected development: the album segment of the music business is moving back toward vinyl LPs, as it did decades ago.

For the past few years, year-end reports have been released by Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music and then, for a short period, MRC Data). These have joined the RIAA's Music Revenue Reports, the IFPI's Global Music Report, and Edison Research's Infinite Dial Research as a select few iconic measures of the state of the music business.

Luminate data measures music consumption rather than money (streams, sales, and radio airplay). Numerous numbers presented in the 2022 study are consistent with predictions made by experts in the field. continued development in the popularity of streaming music; a shift in the growth of video streams (YouTube, TikTok) away from audio streams (Spotify, Apple Music); and an increase in the proportion of listeners who are megastars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Bad Bunny.

The data, however, reveal a hidden narrative about music albums and vinyl: while the album is gradually losing popularity as a popular music release package, it is rapidly appearing in vinyl LPs. The data indicates that the album is returning to its origins after decades of modifications, experimentation, and digitization. The album as we know it today first appeared in its 20-minute-per-side configuration in the late 1940s.

According to this data from Luminate's research, overall album sales have dropped 8.2% since 2021. However, sales of albums are distributed among four different media: digital downloads, CDs, vinyl LPs, and cassettes. All album sales categories, excluding the latter, which are a rounding error on overall sales, are declining, with the exception of vinyl, which is the largest of the four and is (still) increasing.

Although the rise of vinyl sales is slowing down, vinyl still accounts for 43% of all record sales in terms of unit volume. The physical record market is already dominated by vinyl (54%), and digital album sales are rapidly declining. By the end of the following year, vinyl is most likely to account for at least half of all record sales. Additionally, vinyl's portion of album income is probably already well over 50% due to the fact that vinyl LP costs are often substantially higher than those of CDs and digital downloads.

According to Luminate's research, sales of classic music, or "catalog," are rising overall and disproportionately to sales of newer music. Two of the 10 best-selling albums across all formats in 2022 are classics: Michael Jackson's Thriller and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, which made a comeback to the charts after more than 40 years owing to Nathan Apodaca's trending TikTok video in late 2020. However, on vinyl, Taylor Swift's next album, Folklore, comes in at number seven, and the Beatles' classic Abbey Road comes in at number ten. And Taylor Swift's Midnights, the best-selling album of 2022, sold 945,000 copies of vinyl, or 52% of its total sales. This is almost enough for it to achieve platinum status.

If you consider minor independent releases and secondhand vinyl, the vinyl market in the U.S. alone currently exceeds $1 billion. Another bit of information from Luminate's Year-End Music Report highlights the most intriguing aspect of this phenomenon: Half of vinyl customers don't have turntables at home. This has prompted many people to wonder why so many people are still buying vinyl in the era of widespread and largely free music streaming.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global umbrella trade association whose members include the RIAA in the United States, recently conducted an online survey in an effort to find an answer to that question. The results were released in a report titled Engaging with Music 2022 last November.

The survey discovered that "I appreciate physically owning my music," the most common response to the question "Why do you like vinyl?" The same cannot be said of digital downloads. I appreciate looking at physical records, which came in at number two, and I want to support my favorite artists by purchasing physical albums, which came in at number five. These factors may help to explain why so many vinyl customers do not own turntables, as LPs serve as a form of merchandise and fandom mementos for them. And none of the top six reasons given by the IFPI for purchasing vinyl have anything to do with the purportedly enhanced sound quality.

The Luminate Year-End Music Report also provides some information on vinyl customers' personalities and musical preferences. Rock music dominated vinyl sales in the early years of the vinyl renaissance, when the majority of the titles were older albums like Rumours, Thriller, and other Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin releases. Nowadays, vinyl is accessible for the majority of recent releases across all genres. While pop and rock dominated the top-selling vinyl LPs of 2022, hip-hop was represented by three titles from Kendrick Lamar and Tyler the Creator, while Bad Bunny, Morgan Wallen, and R&B also made appearances on the overall album list across all media (The Weeknd).

In other words, rock music continues to dominate vinyl sales. According to Luminate's research, rock albums accounted for 51.7% of total album sales in 2022, meaning that rock sold more vinyl than all other genres put together. The study also reveals that vinyl is the sole format preferred by rock lovers over that of the average listener.

Gen Z is also likely to purchase vinyl. Teenagers and young adults who were born into the digital age are 27% more likely than the typical listener to buy vinyl, but they are also significantly more likely to find new music on brief internet video snippets. In other words, Gen Zers are more likely to view brief music videos on TikTok before buying the songs they like on vinyl. And they spend more money on music than the typical customer does.

The album was broken up into individual songs during the digital revolution of the 2000s, and now TikTok and apps of a similar nature are cutting music tracks into bite-sized pieces. The arrangement that engineers at Columbia Records came up with after World War II continues to connect with audiences, as suggested by all this data, which also suggests that record labels are likely to continue investing in albums and album-oriented performers. It also suggests that claims of rock & roll's demise have once more been vastly overblown.

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About the Creator

Goran Vinchi

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