According to the Recording Industry Association of America, physical albums amounted to a measly 9% of the US music market in 2020. If you look more closely, however, you can see that LPs are on a steady rise. Sales of LPs exceeded $600 million in 2020, overtaking CD sales for the first time since 1986. The LP market in the UK has also returned to an early-1990s level. Moreover, the phenomenon, which had been showing up in parts of the market, even had an effect on the June 12 Billboard charts.
 

Last week on the Billboard 200, Taylor Swift’s album evermore returned to number one from 74th place after five months on the chart. Album sales jumped 84-fold from the previous week to 192,000, a figure which included 102,000 LPs—the highest weekly sales for vinyl in history. Preorders had been building up since the time of the album’s release in December, and were finally released to the market en masse at the end of May. Something similar happened, albeit on a different scale: The same week, Paramore rereleased their 2007 album Riot! Seven thousand copies of the vinyl later, and it ranked eighth on the Top Album Sales chart.
 

Considering that streaming accounts for over 80% of the music market, the overall market is limited by the size of the streaming market. The LP market, though, gives both artists and record labels an opportunity to overcome that limit. Powerful fanbases, like those of Taylor Swift, put great value on limited-edition vinyls that come in a variety of versions, creating new opportunities not only for record stores but for online and offline retailers in general. In this market, red doesn’t stand for Ferrari—it stands for Target.
 

Vinyl Me, Please is a label that specializes in rereleasing LPs and also offers a subscription service where customers can receive a record a month. The company currently boasts 80,000 subscribers. According to the label, the LP market started with a focus on millennials, and has since begun to expand to listeners in their early 20s and those over 40. It’s self-evident that COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns have aided the LP market in terms of both size and speed; however, the market had already been establishing itself for a few years prior. In other words, the appeal of the LP is not some newly discovered attraction. When it comes to physical albums, LPs outclass CDs in both size and design. We don’t have CD players anymore anyway, so we may as well go with the bigger, bolder option.

TRIVIA

The Popularity of LPs
The LP market is no stranger to releasing a variety of versions in parallel. Between color, marble patterns, and transparency, many combinations are possible. Taylor Swift’s evermore, for instance, was released with more than eight different covers and record designs. Some artists want to take a more active role when it comes to providing a physical experience: Rhymesayers makes an album that resembles a coloring book and includes crayons, allowing listeners to make their copy one-of-a-kind; Kamashi Washington released a four-record album, with a fifth vinyl hidden in the packaging. You have to take the packaging apart in order to find it.