Revenue generated from the purchase of vinyl records increased by 94% in the first half of 2021 over the same period last year, according to a mid-year report by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Overall sales jumped to a $467 million value stateside.

With the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as regulations that forced record stores to shut down and delivery services to slow to a near halt, it was to be expected that once the world began to slowly reopen earlier this year, sales would increase for not only vinyl, but other forms of music consumption. In fact, revenue for recorded music in the States increased by 27% for the first half of 2021, with subscriptions to streaming services like Spotify and Apple music being a key contributing factor. Those subscriptions account for over two thirds of the increase – and for the first time ever, the United States has seen the number of paid streaming subscriptions jump to over 80 million.

As sales of physical music media including vinyl records continue to increase, digital music downloads saw a decrease in the first six months of 2021. They only account for roughly 5% of the overall surge in music consumption, with individual track downloads down 12% from the same period in 2020.

Sales of vinyl LPs and EPs grew 28.7% to total $619.6 million in 2020, according to the snapshot. That was $136 million more than was spent in the same year on CDs, which declined in retail sales by 23% to $483 million. As a whole, physical sales of music have remained nearly identical at $1.1 billion per year since 2018.

Streaming is still king in the modern recording landscape, accounting for 83% of the $12.2 billion total recorded music revenues. 2020 saw paid subscriptions increase by 14.6% to $7 billion, and those of limited-tier services up 13.4% to $724 million per the RIAA. Physical sales accounted for 9% of total revenues, with digital downloads at 6% and synch at 2%.

The figures line up with those of Discogs, who published its own 2020 mid-year and year-end reports. The database and marketplace sold nearly 12 million vinyl records on their platform last year – 40.75% more than in 2019.

Owing to the upset are the closures of retail locations where CDs were normally purchased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interest in online vinyl purchases trended the opposite direction in 2020. Discogs’ user base grew by 1,229,384 last year, 20% more than registered on the site for the first time in 2019.

The 2020 Year-End Music Industry Revenue Report is available in full on the RIAA website.

The report, titled Mid-Year RIAA Revenue Statistics, estimates that total U.S. retail sales of recorded music grew to $5.65 billion in the first half of 2020. Of that sum, streaming revenues (which include subscription, ad-supported, on-demand and lean-back models) accounted for $4.8 billion – $512.3 million more than the same period in 2019. For the sake of comparison, U.S. streaming grew from  $3.4 billion in the first half of 2019 to $4.3 billion in the first half of 2019.

Music Business Worldwide notes that markets outside the U.S. have seen similar increases. The first half of 2020 saw wholesale recording industry revenue grew 4% in Spain and 4.8% in Germany.

Perhaps an even more unexpected phenomenon is the proportion of music sold in physical formats in the first half of 2020. Despite U.S. physical sales dropping by 23% to $376 million, vinyl record sales increased 4% to $232 million – 62% of the total. According to the RIAA report, vinyl hasn’t outsold CDs since the 1980s. Their findings line up with a mid-year report shared by Discogs which posted growth in vinyl sales of 29% through the platform’s marketplace.

More information is available in the Mid-Year RIAA Revenue Statistics report.

Image credit: Elviss Railijs