Vinyl Records: A Collector's Item in the Digital Age

Back in 2023, Luminate’s 2022 Year-End Music Report contained one piece of information that was easily overlooked: 50 percent of vinyl buyers own a record player. While that's not exactly headline news, the more interesting part of this equation is the part that Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music) didn’t explicitly mention: If 50 percent of vinyl buyer own a record player, the other 50 percent apparently don't.

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 latest Engaging with Music report, some of the reasons for buying vinyl records have nothing to do with actually playing them. Having asked vinyl buyers from 22 countries for their main reasons to do so, IFPI found that collecting vinyl was the most-cited reason, followed closely by wanting to physically own the music, both possible without a record player. Granted, reason number three was liking the ritual of playing a vinyl record, which requires a record player, but number 4, liking to look at records, once again doesn't.

This all goes to show that even in the digital age, when pretty much any music ever created can be 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 remuneration.