History of Vinyl Record Sales and Market Share in the U.S. (1960s–2024)
Vinyl’s Golden Era: 1960s–1970s
In the 1960s and 1970s, vinyl records were virtually synonymous with recorded music in the United States. Vinyl was the dominant format—consumers bought 45 RPM singles for hit songs and 33⅓ RPM LPs for full albums, with turntables serving as the centerpiece of home entertainment. During this golden era, vinyl sales hit all-time highs. In the late 1970s, U.S. vinyl record sales exceeded 500 million units per year. For example, 1978 marked a peak: sales of vinyl albums and EPs generated about $2.5 billion in revenue (at the time) and accounted for roughly 60% of all U.S. recorded music revenue.
In other words, well over half of music industry dollars came from vinyl records in the ’70s. Major releases like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Dark Side of the Moon spun on millions of turntables, and vinyl utterly dominated the market with about 66% of format revenues at its peak. This was vinyl’s zenith, a period when the format reigned unchallenged in both unit sales and cultural impact.
Challenges from Tape and CD: The 1980s Decline
Vinyl’s supremacy began to falter in the late 1970s and 1980s as new playback technologies arrived. The first threat was magnetic tape. The 8-track cartridge and, more significantly, the compact cassette offered something vinyl could not: portability. The watershed moment came in 1979 with the introduction of the Sony Walkman, a portable cassette player that let people easily enjoy music on the go. Suddenly, listeners could carry their music in their pocket, a game-changer that started chipping away at vinyl’s dominance. By the early 1980s, pre-recorded cassette tape sales were skyrocketing, and by 198,3, U.S. cassette sales had surpassed vinyl LP sales for the first time.
Shares of music sales for different formats | Talmage
The next blow was the compact disc (CD), a digital format introduced in the mid-1980s. CDs were smaller and touted “perfect” sound quality and durability (the infamous early marketing claim was that CDs were practically indestructible). Consumers embraced the new format enthusiastically. By 1991, just a few years after its introduction, CDs had surpassed cassettes as the top-selling format in the United States. Over about a decade, vinyl went from king to third place, behind cassettes and CDs.
Mainstream record stores gradually shrank their vinyl sections or removed them entirely in favor of the shiny new discs. Vinyl’s market share, which had been around two-thirds of the industry’s revenue in the late ’70s, collapsed through the ’80s. By the end of the 1980s, vinyl was rapidly becoming a niche product. Many audiophiles and DJs still cherished vinyl for its analog sound, but to the average consumer, the LP was seen as outdated. This period marked the start of a steep decline for vinyl records.
Near-Extinction in the 1990s and the Digital Revolution
The 1990s marked the decline of vinyl’s mainstream presence. As CDs took over retail shelves, vinyl all but vanished from major outlets. By the early ’90s, vinyl LPs accounted for well under 1% of U.S. music sales, on the order of 0.8% of total music revenue. At this point, vinyl was largely kept alive by DJs, collectors, and a few audiophile labels.
Remember this? | Shutterstock
The broader industry was riding the CD boom: overall U.S. music sales (driven by CD albums) hit a historic peak around 1999. However, ironically, just as the CD format was flourishing, a new threat emerged in the late 1990s: digital music. The advent of compressed digital audio (MP3 files) and peer-to-peer networks, such as Napster (launched in 1999), began eroding physical media sales. By the early 2000s, official digital download stores (notably Apple’s iTunes in 2003) arrived, and consumer behavior started shifting from buying discs to buying (or pirating) digital files.
In this transition, vinyl hit its absolute nadir. The early 2000s were the bleakest time for the format. For example, by 2004, vinyl records represented a minuscule 0.2% of total recorded music revenue in the U.S. In 2005, annual new vinyl album sales in the U.S. fell to under 1 million units, essentially a rounding error in an industry that sold hundreds of millions of CDs.
Revenue from vinyl plunged from those multi-billion-dollar heights of the late ’70s to barely $10 million per year in the early 2000s. In other words, vinyl’s share of the market was around one-tenth of one percent at mid-decade, effectively “dead” as a mass medium. The music landscape was now dominated by CDs and digital downloads, with the up-and-coming format of the 2010s being streaming. Few would have predicted that vinyl records had any comeback in them at this stage.
The Vinyl Revival Begins: Late 2000s
Yet, in a surprising twist, the late 2000s witnessed the rebirth of vinyl. Around 2007, U.S. vinyl sales stopped shrinking and actually began to rise year-over-year. What sparked this renaissance? A convergence of cultural and industry forces reignited interest in the old black discs. A major catalyst often cited is Record Store Day, first held in April 2008. This annual event was created to celebrate independent record shops. On the inaugural Record Store Day, dozens of artists released limited-edition vinyl pressings exclusive to indie stores. The result was a jolt of energy for the vinyl market—2008 saw a 147% increase in U.S. vinyl record sales (versus the year prior), a leap largely credited to Record Store Day’s success.
Throughout the late 2000s, turntables and vinyl records began to appear in trendy urban boutiques, college dorms, and the living rooms of a new generation that had grown up with iPods but were now seeking a more tangible music experience. Enthusiasts praised vinyl’s warmer sound and large-format album artwork, while many artists and labels (especially in indie rock, punk, and electronic genres) began pressing small batches of LPs again. From 2006 onward, vinyl sales have increased every single year, an unbroken growth streak that has continued for well over 15 years. What began as a niche retro fad was slowly turning into a sustained comeback.
Vinyl sales through time – graph | Talmage
Growth in the 2010s: From Niche to Mainstream Collectible
Throughout the 2010s, vinyl record sales increased steadily, albeit from a low base. Year after year, the numbers hit new post-1990s highs. In 2011, 2012, 2013, and beyond, vinyl unit sales continued to set modern-era records, and the format’s revenue contribution grew accordingly (even as overall music revenues declined in the digital download era). By the mid-2010s, major retail chains such as Barnes & Noble, Urban Outfitters, and even electronics stores began stocking vinyl LPs, reflecting a growing consumer demand.
A telling milestone came in 2014: rock artist Jack White released Lazaretto, an album designed with vinyl collectors in mind (featuring hidden tracks and other vinyl-only gimmicks). It sold 40,000 copies on vinyl in its first week, the biggest one-week vinyl sales total since SoundScan began tracking in 1991. That was a clear sign that new releases could succeed on vinyl, not just back-catalog reissues. By the late 2010s, vinyl had firmly re-entered the cultural mainstream as a beloved physical format. Still, in terms of pure market share, the format was modest; vinyl remained a fraction of overall music consumption in an era dominated by services like Spotify and YouTube.
Streaming had exploded by the second half of the 2010s, becoming the primary way most people consumed music. Yet, even in the age of streaming, vinyl continued to grow. The decline of digital downloads in the 2010s (as iTunes sales fell and streaming rose) left an opening for vinyl to claim the mantle of the “last man standing” among purchase-based formats.
By 2019, U.S. vinyl album sales were the highest they had been in decades (tens of millions of units annually), and vinyl was contributing an increasing share of the industry’s revenue (though still single-digit percentages overall). Big pop stars started putting out vinyl editions of their albums, knowing there was demand from collectors. The stage was set for vinyl to hit new milestones in the 2020s.
Vinyl’s Resurgence Peaks in the 2020s (Streaming Era)
Entering the 2020s, vinyl’s unlikely revival only accelerated, even as streaming utterly dominated music consumption. In 2020, a remarkable crossover milestone was reached: for the first time since the 1980s, vinyl record revenues exceeded CD revenues in the U.S., bringing in about $626 million. This made it the first year since 1986 that vinyl was the bigger of the two formats by dollar value. In unit terms, vinyl LPs were also on track to overtake CDs, a feat that would be confirmed shortly after.
It’s worth noting that even with that growth, vinyl was only about 5% of total music revenue in 2020; streaming and other digital sources made up the vast majority. But within the physical market, vinyl had clearly become the leading format of the new decade.
Then came an even bigger boom in 2021, partly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. With touring paused and people stuck at home, many turned to music collecting. Vinyl sales exploded in 2021, rising 68% in units year-over-year and 55% in revenue, and for the first time since 1985, vinyl format revenue surpassed $1 billion in the U.S. In industry terms, this was an astounding comeback. 2021 marked the 15th consecutive year of growth for vinyl, and the format accounted for 63% of all physical format revenue (about 7% of total recorded music revenue) that year.
To put that in perspective, vinyl went from near zero in the mid-2000s to grabbing a solid single-digit percentage of an industry now mostly fueled by streaming subscriptions. The momentum continued into 2022 and 2023. In 2022, U.S. consumers bought 41 million vinyl albums, versus about 33 million CDs, the first time vinyl LPs outsold CDs in units since 1987. Vinyl revenue grew another 17% in 2022 to reach $1.2 billion, extending the growth streak to a 16th year.
By 2023, vinyl sales were on pace yet again for growth (17th straight year), with the format making up roughly 71% of physical music revenue in the U.S. In the first half of 2023, vinyl records accounted for about 72% of all physical-format revenues (about $632 million, far above CDs’ $236 million). Vinyl’s share of total music revenue also inched up further, though streaming still comprised around 84% of the industry’s $15+ billion, a reminder that vinyl, for all its resurgence, remains a specialty in the broader context.
Culturally, vinyl has been embraced by both heritage acts and modern superstars in the 2020s. A striking illustration: Taylor Swift’s 2022 album Midnights sold 945,000 vinyl copies in the U.S., becoming the year’s top-selling vinyl LP. Numbers like that for a single album would have been unthinkable during vinyl’s 1990s drought. Iconic older albums like Abbey Road by The Beatles and Rumours by Fleetwood Mac also consistently rank among year-end vinyl best-sellers, as young listeners discover classics on wax.
Meanwhile, new pressing plants have opened to meet demand, and existing ones have struggled with backlogs due to the vinyl boom. Record Store Day remains an important annual event that can send fans lining up at shops for limited editions—a far cry from the days when record stores were closing en masse. In short, vinyl records have firmly reestablished themselves as a collectors’ and enthusiasts’ format in the streaming era.
The Encore: Vinyl’s Enduring Legacy
From its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s through the format wars of the 1980s, to near oblivion by the 1990s, and then an improbable resurgence in the 21st century, the journey of vinyl records has been a rollercoaster of decline and rebirth. The major trends and turning points, the rise of tapes and CDs, the shift to digital downloads and streaming, and the nostalgia-fueled vinyl revival—each left their mark on vinyl’s fortunes. Vinyl’s comeback has been so robust that it achieved feats once thought impossible, like surpassing CDs again in sales and logging 17 consecutive years of growth from 2006 to 2023.
While vinyl will likely never again command the two-thirds market share it enjoyed in the 1970s, it has secured a lasting and prominent place in the music ecosystem. In an era dominated by intangible digital music, vinyl records have proven that a physical format, with its analog charm, collectible appeal, and cultural cachet, can thrive against the odds. The vinyl story, from dominance to near-death to resurgence, stands as a remarkable chapter in music history, illustrating how formats can fall out of favor and yet come full circle to find new life decades later.
