Did vinyl sales just hit the proverbial brick wall?

@mojistyn - the revival of yinyl sales was not driven by an older demographic.  While a proportion of older listeners have undoubtedly come back to vinyl, having previously switched over to CD, a cursory glance at the racks of any store selling new records will reflect the fact that there is a huge proportion of music which is not targeted at an older demographic.

Contrary to what you say about phones and computers, it's precisely because so much of the modern world is virtual that younger people are attracted to a physical format, especially one that is both visually and aurally rich.

Cassettes …..wow. I don’t know about everyone else but I’m not going back there. 

@yoyoyaya , That would be wonderful but that is not what I have seen and as a family doc I spoke with a lot of young people. Record sales were bound to pick up as boomers got wealthy. The children of boomers had some exposure so there is some interest there.

@grislybutter , The population of a used record store is not representative of the population as a whole. You may see younger record buyers at a used store because us rich old guys do not go there, or any other number of reasons. The point is as far as the overall popularity of records is concerned your observation gives us absolutely zero insite. What will are the demographic popularity of records over a period of 10 years. If interest does not pick up in the Zoomers then vinyl will die. The other problem with vinyl is that it is not the greenest of industries. 

Physical music requires an investment. For the most part it is a fairly expensive investment relatively speaking. To listen to online or streaming you only need your phone and earbuds.

What drove the vinyl resurgence was mostly an upper middle class / affluent segment that is aging and fairly limited. The other segment were the collectors who mostly deal in the used market. The authors questioning why the record companies don’t expand manufacturing and drive prices lower...why would they do that? This market doesn’t reward spending money on R&D or expanding manufacturing. The masses are NOT buying vinyl. This is a relatively small market and doesn’t justify spending the money. Best to take as much profit for as cheaply as possible.

I own vinyl, CD (SACD), and streaming (saved locally) of a number of albums. I don’t buy vinyl to collect, though many do. I buy for the listening quality. To that end, CD (SACD) offers me the best sound quality. This is especially true tor the Original Master Recordings on SACD format. Next would be one of the high quality streaming services I have over some high end headphones. These even rival the limited edition vinyl half-speed master recordings I have like Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms", which on my system the vinyl does sound very good.

Sadly, streaming is getting better and better. The people buying physical music just aren’t a large enough segment to keep it going to any great extent. Producing limited numbers of vinyl the old way actually serves the best purpose, scarcity with higher demand pricing.

Stupidly i got rid of my vinyl in the late 80's. I decided to get back into audio about three years ago and about two years ago back into vinyl. I am retired and it was something I really enjoyed. I thought I would focus on about 50 to 100 albums I really liked. That was 300 albums ago....!