Skip to main content

Vinyl sales are still on the rise in 2015, fueling a revival that keeps pointing up

vinyl recorder app
AngeloDeVal / Shutterstock.com

It looks like the vinyl resurgence isn’t going away any time soon. In fact, for 2015, it may be getting stronger. Vinyl album sales between January and March of this year were 53 percent higher than the first three months of 2014, according to a recent Nielsen report.

Driving the uptick are catalog albums, defined as a record released at least 18 months prior. The report states that catalog vinyl album sales are up 66 percent. It also notes that current vinyl releases are up 37 percent in the first three months of 2015.

Recommended Videos

Alongside the news, Billboard broke out the top-selling vinyl records since 2010 which includes both recent and historic blockbuster LPs. The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” tops the list, which features other classics from the likes of Pink Floyd and Bob Marley, but also includes current bands like Mumford & Sons, Jack White, and the Arctic Monkeys.

billboard-top-vinyl-chart-2010-2015
Image used with permission by copyright holder

This is just the latest news solidifying the current love affair with the audiophile-favorite analog format, which hit 9.2 million units in sales last year (up from 6.1 million in 2013). And the trend has been building for some time now: Vinyl album sales in the U.S. have grown 260 percent since 2009, according to Nielsen.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

While vinyl’s uptick provides an uplifting story within an industry on the downturn, vinyl sales are still a niche market. In the US, vinyl sales made up just 3.6 percent of all albums sold last year, according to Nielsen. Globally, vinyl sales account for only 2 percent of industry revenues, according to the IFPI.

There are certainly signs that, at the very least, millions will continue to buy vinyl each year. Most tellingly, we recently reported that vinyl consumers are largely music fans under 35, spelling a relatively bright future for the format. In other recent heartening news for vinyl enthusiasts, a Midwestern vinyl manufacturer bought 13 new record presses, just to keep up with demand for new vinyl orders.

While we certainly can’t say vinyl is en route to overtake streaming music anytime soon — or ever — the format is poised to stay on consumer’s radars for the near future and beyond. And for those who once feared vinyl would be lost to the sands of time long ago, that’s a comforting thought.

Chris Leo Palermino
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Chris Leo Palermino is a music, tech, business, and culture journalist based between New York and Boston. He also contributes…
What is spatial audio? The 3D sound experience fully explained
Person listening to spatial audio using Apple AirPods Max headphones.

Since Apple added “spatial audio” to the Apple Music streaming service and the AirPods family of wireless earbuds and headphones in 2021, it feels like you can’t read about new audio products or services without running into that term. And just a few short years later, it’s seemingly everywhere.

This has led to a lot of misconceptions about what spatial audio is, how it works, and why you need to hear it for yourself. People often ask, “If Apple created spatial audio, why are other companies claiming they do it, too?” The answer is that Apple didn’t create it, and you certainly don’t need to own its products to experience spatial audio.

Read more
How to download music from SoundCloud on desktop and mobile
Soundcloud Interface on a Macbook.

If you’re a huge music fan, you’ve probably combed through the many playlists, artists, and albums of your Spotify or Apple Music subscription. But what about all the indie artists of the world? Some music-streaming platforms are better than others at celebrating the
‘unsung gem’ acts, but one of the most reliable forums for new, off-the-grid tunes is SoundCloud.

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud has always prioritized music that’s a bit under the radar. With over 320 million tracks in its library, the platform will even let you download a majority of its songs and albums.

Read more
The best kids headphones of 2024: for fun, safety, and sound
Two kids using the Puro Sound PuroQuiet Plus to watch something on a tablet.

Kid-friendly consumer tech is all the rage these days, so it’s no surprise that there’s an entire market of headphones designed exclusively for young ones. But when we think “kid-friendly,” sometimes we imagine products that are built to be a bit more throwaway than their adult counterparts. That’s not the case with the products on our list of the best headphones for kids, though.

We want our child-tailored headphones to include parental-controlled volume limiters, to ensure our children aren’t harming their eardrums. Pretty much every entry on our list checks this vital box, but we also wanted to point you and yours toward products that offer exceptional noise-canceling, built-in mics for phone and video calls, and long-lasting batteries for schooldays or a long flight.

Read more