For the Record: Facts About Vinyl

illustration by Serge Bloch

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We may live in an ­increasingly digital world, but sales of vinyl albums continue to boom. Last year was the 18th consecutive year that LP (long play) sales grew in the United States, and it was the biggest year for the format since Luminate, a company that tracks music sales, began collecting data in 1991. ­Almost 50 million vinyl albums were sold in 2023, up 14.2 per cent from 2022—still a long way from the 1970s, when more than 300 million records would sell in a single year.

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This recent surge is fuelled by none other than Ms Taylor Swift. Last year’s top-selling vinyl album was her 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the first record to sell a million copies in a calendar year since Luminate’s launch. Swift had five of the top 10 bestselling ­albums of 2023. Total sales of her albums ­(almost 3.5 million copies) accounted for 7 per cent of all vinyl sold in the US in 2023. 

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In 1948, Columbia Records unveiled the first LP: a ­recording of the New York Philharmonic ­performing Mendel-ssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. While previous phonograph records were made of shellac and played at 78 revolutions per minute, the new PVC ­(‘vinyl’) disc played at 33⅓ rpm, hence better ­audio quality. It also increased the playing time from 5 minutes to 22 minutes per side.

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LP sales began to decline in the late ’70s, with the success of cassette tapes and then compact discs (eight-track tapes didn’t catch on the same way). By 1988, CDs were outselling LPs, but sales of all these formats dove dramatically in the 21st century, thanks to digital music distribution.

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The bestselling albums in US history are all from the LP era. Here are the top six according to RIAA, the trade organization for the music recording industry: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 (Eagles); Thriller (Michael Jackson); Hotel California (Eagles); Back in Black (AC/DC); Led Zeppelin IV (Led Zeppelin); and The Beatles, aka the White Album (the Beatles). 

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Most music lovers will tell you vinyl sounds better than digital music, but its audio quality compared to that of CDs is hotly debated. Though LPs can scratch and degrade, ­vinyl fans argue that ­records more closely reproduce what the artist originally played in the studio. Engineer Adam Gonsalves of Portland’s Telegraph Mastering notes the “very warm” sound of vinyl, saying it comes closest to “the way that human beings hear music organically.” CDs eliminate the surface crackles and pops, but for many, the imperfections of vinyl add to its charm. 

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Last year marked the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, a celebration that also marked the birth of DJ-ing. At a party in the Bronx organized by DJ Kool Herc on 11 August 1973, Herc unveiled a new technique he called the merry-go-round: He played the brief drum or rhythm section ‘break’ of one record, then switched to an isolated break from another record on a separate turntable. “The best part of records, I went to,” Herc says. And from that, a new art form was born.

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The most expensive LP in history is the lone existing copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The disgraced pharmaceutical exec Martin Shkreli bought it for $2 million in 2015. But after he was convicted of securities fraud, the government seized his assets and, in 2021, resold the album to a cryptocurrency group for $4 million.

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With more than six million albums, Brazilian businessman Zero Freitas is believed to have the world’s largest vinyl ­record collection. He is also a donor to the nonprofit ARChive of Contemporary Music, which houses more than three million sound recordings—including 18,000 blues records contributed by Keith Richards. But the archives are in danger of becoming homeless: The organization recently learnt that its upstate New York space is designated for agricultural use, so it will be forced to move.

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India’s first LP launched in the year 1954, under the label Bulbul, which was a trademark of the company Music Masters Limited, Bombay. In 2022, the LP was reissued by Tara Disc Record. A collector’s item, the LP contains 14 rare tracks of Bollywood music, created by greats such as Lata Mangeshkar, O. P. Nayyar and Shamshad Begum. The first Indian LP to become an international mainstream success was Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s 1955 sarod record, Music of India—Morning and Evening Ragas.

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The recent upswing in vinyl’s popularity has led to a backlog at pressing plants, most of which were closed when it seemed CDs had taken over the market. In 2022, Jack White (formerly of the band White Stripes and the founder of Third Man Records) called on major record labels to build their own record-pressing plants. Last year, Metallica bought the plant in ­Virginia that they have used for their own projects since 2014.

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Buying vinyl albums seems to be as much about fans showing allegiance to their favourite musical artists—or using the records as an interior design element—as it is about actually listening to the albums. According to one study, half of all consumers who purchased a vinyl record in 2022 admitted that they don’t even own a record player.

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The trend of ‘albums as art’ has resulted in a surge in collectible releases, including records pressed on different colours of vinyl. A newer Taylor Swift release might have as many as 10 variants with different colours and track lists. There have even been a few recent examples of the lightweight ‘flexi discs’ that used to occasionally show up bound into magazines. But so far, there’s no sign of a resurgence of cardboard discs, like those the Archies and the Jackson 5 put out on the back of cereal boxes decades ago.