# 53 years of U.S. music sales, 23 formats, one dataset

> Every U.S. recorded-music format from 1973 to 2025 — vinyl, CD, cassette, downloads, streaming — in nominal and inflation-adjusted dollars, with the figures on the page, a citable permalink and CSV for every slice. Sourced from RIAA, RIAJ, BPI, BVMI, SNEP and IFPI.

**Canonical URL:** https://vinylai.app/market/data/  
**Publishers:** RIAA (United States), RIAJ (Japan), BPI (United Kingdom), BVMI (Germany), SNEP (France), IFPI (global)  
**Measure:** wholesale revenue unless a row says otherwise  
**Coverage:** 1973–2025, 23 formats  
**Updated:** 2026-09-13  
**Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — credit the trade body that produced the figures.

Fifty-three years of American format sales, read straight from the RIAA's own published extract. The figures below are on the page — no filter to set, nothing to click — and every one of them carries the arithmetic that produced it. There is an explorer further down for anyone who wants a different cut, plus CSV, JSON and an embeddable chart.

## What the series says about vinyl in 2025

Each line is computed from the series, not typed in by hand, so none of them can drift from the data and all of them update when next year’s extract lands.

1. **U.S. vinyl revenue reached $1.04bn in 2025 — its highest in nominal dollars since 1982.**
   - Basis: LP/EP, wholesale, 2025. 1982 is the most recent earlier year whose nominal figure was larger.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-vinyl-latest
2. **Adjusted for inflation, that 2025 figure is 14.1% of vinyl's 1978 peak of $7.41bn in 2025 dollars.**
   - Basis: $1.04bn ÷ $7.41bn, both in 2025 dollars.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-vinyl-vs-peak
3. **Vinyl's best year in nominal terms remains 1978, at $1.50bn.**
   - Basis: LP/EP, wholesale, nominal dollars, full series.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-vinyl-nominal-peak
4. **From its 1978 peak to its floor in 2005, U.S. vinyl revenue fell 99.8% in real terms.**
   - Basis: $7.41bn (1978) → $14.2m (2005), in 2025 dollars.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-vinyl-collapse
5. **2025 was vinyl's 20th consecutive year of nominal revenue growth in the United States.**
   - Basis: Counted back from 2025 while each year exceeds the one before it.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-vinyl-streak
6. **Vinyl is 9% of all U.S. recorded music revenue in 2025, against 62.4% in 1978.**
   - Basis: LP/EP ÷ the sum of all formats, nominal, each year.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-vinyl-share
7. **No format has matched the CD's 1999 peak of $14.14bn in 2025 dollars.**
   - Basis: CD, wholesale, inflation-adjusted, full series.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/#fact-cd-peak

## The one distinction that decides the story

Vinyl really is selling better than at any point since the early 1980s, and the nominal record is real. But $1.04bn in 2025 buys a fraction of what $1.50bn bought in 1978. Measured in the same dollars, the format is still running at a seventh of its 1978 peak.

Both statements come from the same RIAA series. Which one you cite depends only on whether the figure is inflation-adjusted — which is why every number on this site says which it is, and why the tables carry both columns side by side.

## The industry by decade

| Period | All formats | Vinyl | Vinyl share | Vinyl per year |
| :-- | --: | --: | --: | --: |
| 1973–1979 | $66.35bn | $41.96bn | 63.2% | $5.99bn |
| 1980s | $81.15bn | $27.02bn | 33.3% | $2.70bn |
| 1990s | $134.33bn | $424m | 0.3% | $42.4m |
| 2000s | $113.64bn | $287m | 0.3% | $28.7m |
| 2010s | $71.81bn | $2.36bn | 3.3% | $236m |
| 2020–2025 | $67.66bn | $5.20bn | 7.7% | $866m |

*All formats, inflation-adjusted to 2025 dollars. The 1970s row covers 1973–1979 because the series begins in 1973, and the 2020s are unfinished — the per-year column is the only fair comparison between them.*

## Data files

- [U.S. by format · CSV](https://vinylai.app/market/data/us-recorded-music-by-format.csv)
- [U.S. by format · JSON](https://vinylai.app/market/data/us-recorded-music-by-format.json)
- [Japan production · CSV](https://vinylai.app/market/data/japan-vinyl-production.csv)
- [All facts · JSON](https://vinylai.app/market/data/facts.json)

## Sources

1. **Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)** — U.S. Sales Database / U.S. Recorded Music Analysis
   - 1973–2025, 23 formats, wholesale revenue, nominal and inflation-adjusted
   - Retrieved 2026-09-13
   - Figures were read from the published data extract behind RIAA’s own dashboard, last updated 2 August 2026 — not re-typed from a news report.
   - https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
2. **Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ)** — RIAJ Yearbook 2025 — Statistics for Physical Products
   - 1994–2024, vinyl production in units and yen
   - Retrieved 2026-09-13
   - Parsed from the Yearbook’s own production tables. Every parsed row was checked against the table’s printed Total; all 31 rows reconcile.
   - https://www.riaj.or.jp/f/en/data/
3. **British Phonographic Industry (BPI)** — UK recorded music market 2025
   - 2025 vinyl revenue, growth and physical share
   - Retrieved 2026-09-13
   - https://www.bpi.co.uk/news/13097053
4. **Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI)** — Musikindustrie in Deutschland 2025
   - 2025 German market, physical segment, vinyl share and growth
   - Retrieved 2026-09-13
   - Read in the German original. BVMI’s English edition renders the 44.2% share ambiguously; the German text attributes it to vinyl (die Schallplatte) unambiguously.
   - https://www.musikindustrie.de/presse/presseinformationen/musikindustrie-in-deutschland-2025
5. **SNEP** — Bilan 2025 du marché de la musique enregistrée
   - 2025 French market and vinyl revenue
   - Retrieved 2026-09-13
   - https://snepmusique.com/communiques-dossiers-de-presse/bilan-2025-snep/
6. **IFPI** — Global Music Report 2026
   - 2025 global revenue, vinyl and physical growth
   - Retrieved 2026-09-13
   - https://www.ifpi.org/global-music-report-2026-global-recorded-music-revenues-grow-6-4-as-record-companies-drive-innovation/

## Related pages in this dataset

- [Every year of U.S. vinyl revenue: 1978 peak, 2005 floor, 2025 recovery](https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-sales-by-year/) — The complete year-by-year vinyl series, with every figure in the table.
- [The CD passed vinyl in 1987. Vinyl took the lead back in 2020.](https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/) — The two-format comparison, with both crossover years and the yearly gap.
- [23 U.S. music formats since 1973: when each peaked, and what replaced it](https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/) — The lifecycle of every format: debut year, peak year, peak share, current state.
- [Japan pressed 3.15m vinyl records in 2024](https://vinylai.app/market/data/japan-vinyl-production/) — The full Japanese production series in units and yen, and what it does not measure.

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Compiled by VinylAI (https://vinylai.app). Figures belong to the trade bodies named above; this page is a presentation of them, published under CC BY 4.0 so they can be quoted and checked. Every statement carries the arithmetic that produced it.