After vinyl sales saw a significant rise earlier in the decade decade, Billboard’s latest music consumption report reveals a 33% decline in record sales this year

Compared to last year’s music consumption data, vinyl sales fell from 34.9 million units in 2023 to just 23.3 million in 2024. It’s not just vinyl either: CDs and digital album sales also dropped in 2024, with CDs falling 19.5% and digital albums down by 8.3% from where they were in 2023. All told, album sales across the board are down by 23%, decreasing from 75.5 million units sold in 2023 to 57.5 million units in 2024.

There have been some notable increases from last year: for one, vinyl is still outpacing CDs, so the revival of collecting and spinning records hasn’t died out completely. Meanwhile, audio on-demand streams increased by 7% from 2023, and catalog releases (albums or songs that were released over 18 months ago) were streamed more than current ones this year.

As the audio business platform Headphonesty suggests,...