Checked 2026-09-13
Vinyl in numbers
Figures for the vinyl market, taken from the industry body that publishes each one, with the year and the kind of measurement attached. They are not interchangeable: one country reports what shipped, another what was sold at the till, a third what labels booked as revenue. Adding them together produces a number that means nothing, which is the most common mistake in this subject.
This page is deliberately incomplete. Rows appear once someone has opened the source and confirmed both the figure and what it measures — everything still unverified is listed at the bottom rather than filled in from a secondary source.
Vinyl, by country
| Country | Figure | Value | Year | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | Vinyl share of the physical market | 44.2% | 2025 | Share | BVMI |
| Germany | Vinyl growth year on year | +2.8% | 2025 | Retail trade turnover | BVMI |
| Germany | Vinyl share of the physical marketFirst half of 2026 — vinyl has still not overtaken CD in Germany by turnover, although CD is falling faster. | 47.8% | H1 2026 | Share | BVMI |
| Germany | Vinyl growth year on year | +9.8% | H1 2026 | Retail trade turnover | BVMI |
| France | Vinyl revenueUp roughly 15%, and on its own responsible for about a third of the growth of the whole French market. | €113m | 2025 | Label revenue | SNEP |
| Italy | Vinyl growth year on year | +13.7% | 2025 | Label revenue | FIMI |
| Italy | Vinyl share of physical units soldOf 4.6 million physical units sold, 51% were CD and 47% vinyl. | 47% | 2025 | Units sold | FIMI |
| United States | Vinyl revenueVinyl LP/EP. The highest nominal figure since 1982 — but 14.1% of the 1978 peak once inflation is removed. Full 1973-2025 series: /market/data/vinyl-sales-by-year/ | $1.043bn | 2025 | Wholesale shipment revenue | RIAA |
| United States | Vinyl revenue at its 1978 peak, in 2025 dollarsInflation-adjusted using the CPI adjustment RIAA publishes beside the nominal series. The nominal 1978 figure was $1.50bn. | $7.41bn | 1978 | Wholesale shipment revenue | RIAA |
| United States | Vinyl singles revenueRIAA counts 7-inch singles apart from LP/EP. | $15.2m | 2025 | Wholesale shipment revenue | RIAA |
| Japan | Vinyl productionUp 17% on 2023. Production shipped by producers, not retail sales. Full 1994-2024 series: /market/data/japan-vinyl-production/ | 3.15m units | 2024 | Production, units | RIAJ |
| Japan | Vinyl production valueUp 26% on 2023, at producer prices. | ¥7.89bn | 2024 | Production, value | RIAJ |
| Global | Vinyl growth year on yearA 19th consecutive year of growth. IFPI publishes the rate, not a global vinyl total. | +13.7% | 2025 | Label revenue | IFPI |
The market around it
Vinyl's share only means something next to the market it is a share of, so the same rules apply to these rows: the metric type is named, and figures from different bodies are not combined.
| Country | Figure | Value | Year | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | Recorded music market, all formatsUp 2.3% on 2024. | €2.42bn | 2025 | Retail trade turnover | BVMI |
| France | Physical marketUp 5% — the best physical result in 25 years. | €205m | 2025 | Label revenue | SNEP |
| France | Recorded music market, all formatsUp 3.9%. | €1.071bn | 2025 | Label revenue | SNEP |
| Italy | Physical marketUp 21.9%, and 15% of the total market. | €74.7m | 2025 | Label revenue | FIMI |
| United States | Recorded music market, all formatsSum of the 23 format lines RIAA publishes; the database ships an empty total column. The 2024 sum matches RIAA's published wholesale total for that year. | $11.54bn | 2025 | Wholesale shipment revenue | RIAA |
| Global | Physical formats, growth year on year | +8.0% | 2025 | Label revenue | IFPI |
| Global | Recorded music market, all formatsUp 6.4%. | US$31.7bn | 2025 | Label revenue | IFPI |
| Italy | Recorded music market, all formatsUp 10.7%. FIMI reports this figure in US dollars in its English edition; the euro figure is published separately and we do not convert between them. | US$579m | 2025 | Label revenue | FIMI |
Why these numbers cannot be compared directly
Each national body measures a different thing, and the vocabulary hides it. RIAA publishes wholesale revenue from shipments — records that left a distributor, whether or not anyone bought them. BVMI publishes Handelsumsatz, the retail trade turnover. SNEP publishes chiffre d'affaires booked by labels. RIAJ publishes production: how many discs were manufactured. A headline saying "German vinyl grew faster than American vinyl" is comparing till receipts with factory shipments.
The methodology page sets out what each body publishes and which comparisons survive.
Sources
| Body | Country | Publishes | When | Free |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RIAA | United States | U.S. Sales DatabaseWholesale revenue from shipments to retail, by format, in an interactive database that runs back to 1973. Shipments are not sales: a record shipped to a shop and never sold still counts. | Year-end and mid-year | Yes |
| BVMI | Germany | Musikindustrie in Zahlen / JahreswirtschaftsberichtHandelsumsatz — retail trade turnover, what the market is worth at the till. Vinyl is reported separately with its share of the physical market. | Annual figures in late February; a half-year report in summer | Yes |
| SNEP | France | Bilan annuel du marché de la musique enregistréeChiffre d'affaires — revenue booked by labels, in euros. Vinyl is a separate line within the physical segment. | Annual, early in the year; plus a half-year bilan | Yes |
| FIMI | Italy | Il mercato discografico italianoRevenue for the market, plus unit counts for the physical segment, which is where the vinyl-versus-CD split is reported. An English edition is published alongside. | Annual, early in the year; plus a half-year report | Yes |
| IFPI | Global | Global Music ReportTrade revenue — what record companies book, worldwide. The full report is paid, but the annual press release carries the global total and the growth rate for each format, including vinyl. It does NOT break vinyl revenue out by market, so no country figure can be taken from it. | Annual, March | Yes |
| RIAJ | Japan | RIAJ Year Book and monthly production statisticsProduction — how many discs were manufactured and their value at list price, with analogue records as their own line. Production is neither shipments nor sales, and Japan is the only one of these bodies that reports it monthly. | Year Book in June; production statistics monthly | Yes |
Not here yet, and why
These sources exist and are on the list. They are absent because nobody has yet opened them and confirmed what they publish — and a figure repeated from a secondary source is exactly what this page is meant to replace.
| Body | Country | What has to be established first |
|---|---|---|
| Luminate | United States | Whether the year-end report is readable without registration, and which figures are free. |
| BPI | United Kingdom | Half answered on 2026-09-13: the annual press release is free and gives vinyl revenue of £174.7m for 2025, up 19.9%, at 62.9% of physical. But BPI calls it only "revenue" and never says whether that is trade or retail, so the metric type is still unknown and the figure stays out of the table. Needs a BPI methodology note or All About The Music. |
| Official Charts | United Kingdom | The annual vinyl chart and whether the underlying totals are published. |
| NVPI | Netherlands | What is published annually and in what form. |
| Promusicae | Spain | What is published annually and in what form. |
| Discogs | Marketplace | Whether the year-in-review is still published; recent years have been irregular. |
| Record Store Day | Global | What the organisation publishes about the day itself. |
Using these figures
Take them. Every row is a published fact with its source named, and the data page has the whole set as a CSV under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. If you cite one, cite the industry body for the number and this page for the compilation, and keep the metric type with it — that is the part that stops a correct figure becoming a wrong sentence. the data page.
The full year-by-year series
This hub carries the latest reported year for each market, because that is what each association publishes. The long runs — every year, with inflation-adjusted figures — live on our open-data pages:
- U.S. vinyl revenue, 1973–2025 — every year, nominal and in 2025 dollars, with each year's share of the market.
- Vinyl versus CD — both crossover years, computed from the series, and the gap in every year since 1980.
- Every format since 1973 — debut, peak, peak share and current standing for all 23 formats RIAA tracks.
- Japanese vinyl production, 1994–2024 — units and yen from the RIAJ Yearbook, with the average producer price per record.
- Charts you can embed — the same figures as ready-made widgets, free under CC BY 4.0.