The report suggested that “price accessibility” could be a factor behind the trend, while also show the importance of physical fandom in K-pop culture, and the success of BTS’s March comeback album ‘ARIRANG’.
Back in 2024, more than half of 18-24-year-olds surveyed by Key Production, the UK’s biggest vinyl packaging firm, revealed their preference for listening to physical music.
2025 was vinyl’s 19th consecutive year of growth in the US, and vinyl has outsold CDs on units since 2022. The average Discogs collection is 195 records, already 50–60 kg, more than most flat-pack shelves are built to carry. The RIAA’s 2025 year-end report put total US recorded-music revenue at a record $11.5 billion.
Within that, vinyl passed $1 billion in revenue for the first time on around 47 million units, roughly half of all vinyl revenue worldwide comes from the US alone. Growth is not just American.
The UK recorded-music market surpassed £1.5 billion in 2025 (BPI), with vinyl sales rising roughly 18% on the year (ERA), well over a decade of continuous growth. In France vinyl has overtaken the CD, and in Spain vinyl now makes up the majority of physical music sales.
The demographic behind the boom is younger than the format suggests, and increasingly treats records as objects to display, not just play. A significant share of buyers own records they cannot yet play, vinyl has become an identity and a decor choice, which is why display and storage matter. Every record bought
Vinyl records accounted for more than $1 billion in U.S. sales last year, rising more than 9%, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America. The Cambridge, Mass.-based AI company has announced Suno Vinyl, a service that will press users’ generated AI tracks onto vinyl records. It has not gone live.