VinylAI Japan
Japan pressed 3.15m vinyl records in 2024
Japan is the world's largest physical-music market and the only one outside the United States that publishes a long, free, machine-readable vinyl series. It also counts something different from everyone else: RIAJ reports production shipped by producers, not retail sales. Every year from 1994 is below, with the average producer price per record — a figure nobody else publishes because it has to be derived from two tables.
- Source
- RIAA, RIAJ, BPI, BVMI, SNEP, IFPI
- Coverage
- 53 years · 23 formats
- Measure
- Wholesale revenue
- Updated
- 2026-09-13
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
What the Japanese series shows
Derived from the RIAJ production tables. Every row was reconciled against the Yearbook’s own printed column total before publication; all 31 reconcile.
- 01
Japan pressed 3.15m vinyl records in 2024, worth ¥7.89bn at producer prices.
RIAJ Yearbook 2025 production tables, units and value.
- 02
That is 30.9× the 2009 floor of 0.10m records — the low point of the series.
RIAJ Yearbook 2025 production tables, units and value. Lowest year in the series.
- 03
The average producer price of a Japanese record has risen from ¥1,863 in 2009 to ¥2,505 in 2024.
RIAJ Yearbook 2025 production tables, units and value. Production value ÷ units, each year.
- 04
Japanese vinyl production has risen for 4 consecutive years.
RIAJ Yearbook 2025 production tables, units and value. Consecutive years of rising unit production ending 2024.
Production by year, 1994–2024
| Year | Units produced | Production value | Per unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | 620k | ¥1,081m | ¥1,744 |
| 1995 | 534k | ¥881m | ¥1,650 |
| 1996 | 944k | ¥1,312m | ¥1,390 |
| 1997 | 1,034k | ¥1,369m | ¥1,324 |
| 1998 | 1,186k | ¥1,484m | ¥1,251 |
| 1999 | 2,985k | ¥3,575m | ¥1,198 |
| 2000 | 1,914k | ¥2,069m | ¥1,081 |
| 2001 | 1,297k | ¥1,351m | ¥1,042 |
| 2002 | 697k | ¥782m | ¥1,122 |
| 2003 | 580k | ¥676m | ¥1,166 |
| 2004 | 894k | ¥520m | ¥582 |
| 2005 | 306k | ¥406m | ¥1,327 |
| 2006 | 248k | ¥337m | ¥1,359 |
| 2007 | 324k | ¥563m | ¥1,738 |
| 2008 | 212k | ¥352m | ¥1,660 |
| 2009 | 102k | ¥190m | ¥1,863 |
| 2010 | 105k | ¥170m | ¥1,619 |
| 2011 | 210k | ¥336m | ¥1,600 |
| 2012 | 453k | ¥673m | ¥1,486 |
| 2013 | 268k | ¥408m | ¥1,522 |
| 2014 | 401k | ¥678m | ¥1,691 |
| 2015 | 662k | ¥1,175m | ¥1,775 |
| 2016 | 799k | ¥1,455m | ¥1,821 |
| 2017 | 1,063k | ¥1,916m | ¥1,802 |
| 2018 | 1,116k | ¥2,077m | ¥1,861 |
| 2019 | 1,219k | ¥2,146m | ¥1,760 |
| 2020 | 1,095k | ¥2,117m | ¥1,933 |
| 2021 | 1,907k | ¥3,900m | ¥2,045 |
| 2022 | 2,133k | ¥4,336m | ¥2,033 |
| 2023 | 2,691k | ¥6,267m | ¥2,329 |
| 2024 | 3,149k | ¥7,887m | ¥2,505 |
Production (units shipped by producers), not retail sales. RIAJ consolidated 7-inch and 10/12-inch analogue records into one vinyl line in 1994, so the series starts there. Figures are from the 2025 edition of the Yearbook; RIAJ revises earlier years between editions, so a 2020 figure quoted from an older edition may differ. The per-unit column is production value divided by units — an average producer price, not a shop price.
Production is not sales, and the difference matters
A production figure counts records leaving the pressing plant, not records bought. In a growing market the two move together; in a turning one they diverge, because unsold stock sits in the channel. Any sentence of the form "Japan sold X records" is not supported by this series — "X records were pressed" is.
This is also why the table cannot be added to, or compared with, the U.S. revenue figures: those are wholesale dollars received by labels, a different quantity again. For the same reason, country-by-country vinyl figures live on a separate hub that keeps each body's measure attached to its number.
Take the data, cite the source
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Credit the trade body that produced the figures — a link back lets your readers check the slice. Every file carries its source, measure and retrieval date in its own header.
Writing about this? The figures above are also available as embeddable charts — one line of HTML, no script, and the widget keeps its source line so your readers can check it.
Machine readers: every page here has a markdown twin at index.md, the statements above are served as structured claims in the page's JSON-LD, and facts.json carries all of them with their arithmetic. The catalogue entry lives at /.well-known/ai-catalog.json.
Everything behind this page
- 01
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/ - 02
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/ - 03
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 - 04
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 - 05
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/ - 06
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/
The rest of the dataset
Built by VinylAI Market, where each release has a card with condition-by-condition values and listings from sellers worldwide. Spotted an error, or know a trade body publishing a series we should add? Tell us — corrections are published with the date they were made.