Vinyl Album Sales Surpass CD – USA

They say that if you wait around long enough things will come back into style.

Well that is certainly true for the lovers of vinyl. The introduction of the plastic CD devastated vinyl album sales starting around 1986, not due to its superior audio quality, those original CD’s and players sounded dreadful, but due to its convenience and lower cost. The result was a huge increase in plastic sales until about the year 2000 when streaming digital media and digital downloads became a reality, similarly devastating the sales of plastic CD’s. Well, we have now done the fashionable circle and vinyl album sales for 2021 have now exceeded the value of CD albums plus digital album downloads, continuing to grow at an ever increasing rate. No, they are nowhere near where they were in 1978, nor will they probably ever be. However, the younger and some older generations are returning to the world of vinyl. A world that provides a new physical intimacy with your music and its sleeve, cover and enclosure notes and stories.

Image Credit: RIAA

Despite the value of CD album sales rising by over 100 million dollars in 2021, compared to 2020, the total value of album CDs and album digital download sales was still less than vinyl album sales in 2021.

What I find interesting is that many of the current vinyl releases, pop/rock/classical, are often re-releases or performers from the golden age of vinyl and there doesn’t seem to be many new artists releasing on the format. Especially when many albums can literally be produced in a bedroom or garage and then just streamed. Either new performers/bands do not see the benefits of vinyl or their labels won’t pay the studio, mastering, pressing and distribution costs. Maybe some record labels have just forgotten or do not even have the wherewithal to support vinyl any more. Clearly some business’s/record labels see the growing demand for vinyl as a ‘cash cow’ as seen by some of the high prices especially for high end audiophile quality pressings. Yes I realize that the vinyl market is still relatively small and pressing 10,000 copies doesn’t leave much room for margin. However, with many mass pressed albums at $19.99 or more, rising to $125.00 for two 180 gram audiophile quality albums with 2 or 3 tracks on each side, is expensive, with some hard to get and out of print albums selling for $600-800! Clearly, as long as there are consumers who will pay these higher prices just to get a better sounding pressing than that of yesteryear, companies will continue to charge a premium for this format. Let us all hope that they do not kill the format.

Image Credit: Statista

It’s not as if the mastering or pressing process is much ‘better’ than of yesteryear, you only have to listen to many of Sheffield Labs or other early direct to disc recordings. The very same mastering lathes, vinyl presses and sometimes even electronics are still used today, even with the same engineers from yesteryear. Plus there are still a good number of highly respected Mastering Houses with well established and upcoming mastering engineers. However, a cursory review of the vinyl manufacturing market reveals only a handful of very large volume vinyl pressing facilities throughout the world with few, if any, owned by large record labels and many being small and independent. With a limited number of vinyl pressing plants their attention to quality pressings seems to have gone out the window in return for volume. This seems to be upheld by the fact that my last four vinyl albums had to be returned three times before I got one that was well…..acceptable and then only just! Don’t get me wrong, you can still get terrifically well mastered and pressed vinyl albums from houses that include; Mobile-Fidelity, Sterling Sound, QRP, Pallas and RTI. This is just not so for all vinyl pressing facilities, GZ Media is one that immediately springs to mind that I have had several pressings from that were less than stellar.

Image Credit: Statista

I just wonder if the new up and coming average listener/audiophile knows what to listen for when they place that pristine vinyl on their turntable? It can take years of experience, good acoustics and a high quality vinyl playback system to detect some shortcomings of a pressing and I would think that most buy an album for the music content, not to technically analyze its production. So substandard mastering and pressings can go unnoticed.

So what is in the pipeline to improve the audiophiles dream of yet ever better pressings? Besides better vinyl formulations like the SuperVinyl used by Mobile Fidelity and of course processes like Ultra Disc One Step and GAIN2 plus lower pressing counts per stamper, we have several other approaches on the horizon that if they come to large scale fruition may provide the vinyl enthusiast with a bigger slice of vinyl nirvana.

Enter Stockfisch Direct-Metal-Masterings (DMM), HD Vinyl and laser/optical cartridges and of course Direct To Disc (D2D). While the DS Audio optical cartridge has made inroads into the audiophile market it is still expensive and although contactless laser readers were available almost 40 years ago they haven’t made any significant inroads into the audiophile markets. So that leaves DMM, HD Vinyl and D2D. DMM is not a vinyl playback technology, it uses the original metal master and arm/cartridge mounted on its cutting lathe to play the freshly cut metal master, its ANALOG output then driving a high quality DAC/SACD system. Stockfisch claims that this process gives you a sound that is a lot closer to the sound of vinyl but from plastic. HD Vinyl is true vinyl playback and seems on paper to have a lot going for it, but still appears to be under development. Not to be left out the original Direct To Disc is still alive and active, but that requires one perfect take per side and I just wonder how many of today’s musicians can manage that with all their electronic technology and multi-tracking etc.

So is this growth in vinyl ownership spurred on by an increasing appreciation for the sound of vinyl, or just a passing phase for the ‘wannabes’? Only time will tell. However, as vinyl ownership continues to rise let’s hope that the growing revenues spur suppliers to improve pricing and product quality and that technological innovations keep on coming.