Vinyl Records: A Physical Token in the Digital Age?

Aside from the usual sales statistics and year-end charts, Luminate’s 2022 Year-End Music Report contained one interesting piece of information that was easily overlooked: 50 percent of vinyl buyers own a record player. What’s even more interesting is the part of the equation that Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music) didn’t mention: 50 percent of vinyl buyers DON’T own a record player.

So if a sizeable proportion of vinyl buyers don’t even have turntables to play those records, what are they buying them for? According to IFPI's 2022 Engaging with Music report, there are several reasons for buying vinyl records that have nothing to do with actually playing them. Having asked vinyl buyers from 22 countries for their main reason to do so, IFPI found that wanting to “physically own” the music was the most-cited reason, followed closely by “liking to have physical records to look at”, both possible without a record player. Granted, reasons number three and four, “liking the ritual of playing a vinyl record” and “liking to fully immerse oneself in an album” do require a record player, but five and six, “wanting to support the artists” and “reading liner notes”, certainly do not.

This all goes to show that even in the digital age, when pretty much anything can be stored in and streamed from the cloud, physical goods still hold value to people, whether it’s to touch them, to look at them or to actually use them the way they were intended. For artists, especially small and independent ones, pressing and selling vinyl records independently not only creates an opportunity to connect more directly with their fans, but it also opens up another revenue stream which many desperately need in the absence of any meaningful streaming renumeration.