Half of Vinyl Buyers in the US
Don’t Have a Record Player,
New Study Shows
Per Luminate's “Top Entertainment Trends for 2023” report
One might think that the rise in vinyl sales would call for a corresponding rise in turntables.
As it turns out, however, about half of vinyl LP buyers don’t own a record player,
according to a recent study by the music sales data company Luminate (via Music
Luminate’s “Top Entertainment Trends for 2023” report found that of the 3,900 US-based
respondents surveyed, “50% of consumers who have bought vinyl in the past 12 months
own a record player, compared to 15% among music listeners overall.” So — feel free to
double-check our math here — that would indicate that 50% of vinyl buyers over the past
year have no way to play those records at home.
Luminate seems to credit these stats largely to “superfans,” who they define as “music
listeners who spend above average (median) time AND money on music, actively
discover new music, participate in music-related activities on social media, and plan on
attending a live music event in the next 12 months.”
Still, the vast majority of music revenue — 84% in 2022 — still comes from streaming
services, which could indicate that a lot of these “superfans” operate more on a
completist mindset and tend to buy vinyl simply for the sake of owning rather than
necessarily listening to it. It’s also worth noting that the highest-selling albums on vinyl
last year were Taylor Swift’s Midnights (945,000 copies), Harry Styles’ Harry’s House
(480,000), and Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR (263,000) — all artists with notoriously fervent
fanbases.
But the vinyl craze extends far beyond the world of young pop artists, too: Last year,
Jack White called on major record labels to build their own vinyl record pressing plants in
an effort to alleviate delays in manufacturing. Last month, Metallica bought their own
pressing plant after their albums were pressed to vinyl nearly a million times in 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment