US vinyl sales topped $1 billion last year for the first time since 1983
With fandoms and audiophiles alike now wanting their music in a physical format, the analog economy is thriving.
Since the meteoric rise of music streaming, one might imagine the archetypal vinyl collector of today as an audio aficionado that would be more inclined to snub a Taylor Swift album than buy it.
But, statistically speaking, if you purchased a record in the US at all last year, it was most likely to have been “The Life of a Showgirl,” which shifted ~1.6 million units on vinyl alone in 2025, over 5x more than any other release.
Fresh spin
While it’s worth noting that Swift released eight different vinyl LP variants of “Showgirl” for her devoted fanbase to collect and pore over — as well as 11 different CD versions, five digital download versions, and one cassette — the broader vinyl revival has been gaining momentum for some time now.
In a sign of just how far things have come, US vinyl sales surpassed $1 billion in 2025 for the first time since 1983, per the Recording Industry Association of America’s year-end report, published Monday. Unit sales also rose 7.9% from 2024 to 46.8 million last year.
Last year saw a 9.3% year-over-year rise in baseline wax revenues, marking 19 consecutive years of vinyl sales increasing in the US, with an average annual growth rate of ~24%. Meanwhile, when adjusting RIAA data for inflation, the industry juggernaut that is music streaming — which has seen revenues boom over 50x in the last two decades — looks to have plateaued since 2021.
As the RIAA noted, however, paid streaming subscriptions still made up over 55% of the $11.5 billion in revenue across recorded music formats for 2025, as behemoths in the music-on-demand space like Spotify continue to hike their prices.
Hot off the press
The beauty of vinyl — beyond, as any collector will inevitably tell you, the sound quality — is that the capacity to collect it is near endless, storage permitting. And the music industry has clearly been listening to the nostalgia-fueled consumer shift, repressing and reissuing old hits as well as buzzy new albums to meet the demand from waxheads of all ages.
Maybe now it’s just a matter of time before Taylor Swift Inc. brings cassettes and ringtones back into the mainstream across the next album cycle.
