Are U.S. vinyl sales actually declining? Luminate’s 2024 year-end report is raising questions about where the purportedly surging format stands. Photo Credit: Maryna Nikolaieva
Are vinyl sales suddenly declining in the U.S.? Newly released 2024 data is prompting discussion about whether the long-resurging format is grappling with a commercial plateau.
Yesterday, we touched on this 2024 vinyl sales data when breaking down the Luminate year-end report in which it appeared. But in light of the format’s well-documented (and, as calculated by different entities, ongoing) comeback, the matter warrants closer scrutiny.
To be sure, the RIAA registered a 17% YoY vinyl sales spike at estimated retail value for H1 2024. (The trade organization’s full-year recorded-market analysis is forthcoming.)
Luminate, on the other hand, pointed to a 1% YoY decline in full-year 2024 physical album sales volume (including vinyl, CD, and cassette alike, with vinyl by far the largest contributor of the three) in the U.S. – albeit when excluding “independent retail strata sales.”
The dip refers specifically to 55.6 million units moved in 2024, down from 56.2 million units in 2023, the report shows. Meanwhile, indie retail’s physical sales showing was isolated not on a whim, but amid continued controversy over the underlying methodology.
Just to recap, heading into 2024, Luminate overhauled its methodology for calculating independent retailers’ physical sales.
DMN tracked the multifaceted episode in detail last year, including fierce opposition from record stores, Luminate’s subsequent calculation adjustments, and more. But ultimately, sales figures under the retooled model decreased substantially.
We know as much because Billboard (which shares a corporate parent with Luminate) charted the possible vinyl sales slips in its Market Watch breakdowns. Eventually, Billboard pulled all physical sales metrics from Market Watch, and Luminate’s 2024 report acknowledges the measurement pivot in question.
“As previously reported,” the explanation reads in full, “Luminate changed the methodology behind its independent retail sales reporting beginning Week 1 of 2024. While the new modeled methodology more accurately represents the independent retail market, we do not have comparable historical data to provide an accurate year-over-year trend.
“Therefore, independent retail physical sales under the new methodology for 2024 are isolated and no trending is provided versus 2023.”
Trending is, in fact, absent from the 2024 report, which simply discloses indie-retail album sales of 17.3 million vinyl units, 5.4 million CDs, and 165,000 cassettes.
Even after adding the cumulative 22.9 million indie-retail physical units to the non-indie total of 55.6 million units, however, we’re left with 78.5 million physical sales in the U.S. for 2024, per Luminate. That’s well beneath the overall physical sales of 87 million units (up 8.9% YoY) that the company pinpointed in its 2023 report.
It’s also noticeably beneath the RIAA’s H1 2024 estimate, which identified 42.5 million physical units shipped (not necessarily sold to customers) for Q1 and Q2 alone.
In any event, pressing questions remain, in part because there isn’t exactly a consensus on precisely what constitutes an eligible indie retailer for the purposes of Luminate sales data.
If the indie side’s modeled methodology really is more accurate, that would seemingly render Luminate’s historical physical sales data heavily inflated.
Also possible is that U.S. vinyl sales are actually declining – and/or that certain indie retailers’ sales aren’t registering under the fresh model. It’ll be worth keeping each of the possibilities in mind throughout 2025, particularly as the RIAA prepares to release its own 2024 annual report.
And it should be highlighted in conclusion that locally owned record stores, despite the often-used indie descriptor, move quite a few projects from well-known acts like Taylor Swift. Thus, the multifaceted subject carries commercial implications (or at least sales-measurement implications) for a variety of companies, stakeholders, and professionals.