Did vinyl sales just hit the proverbial brick wall?

@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....!

Regarding the trend of LP sales - The increase in sales has gone on long enough to remove any doubt that this is a fad. That doesn't mean that sales won't level out or even decline somewhat but to say that the industry is killing vinyl is absolutely laughable.

Regarding the manufacturing issues of vinyl - LPs are far more difficult and costly to manufacture than CDs. Watch a couple videos from a record plant and you can see that there is a lot of labor involved. Each machine can only stamp one record at a time and it is an agonizingly slow process. The stampers are expensive and mechanically fussy. The steps to make the metal master are also labor intensive and each unit must be carefully inspected by a carbon based life form. LPs are made with an inherently expensive, labor intensive, and difficult-to-automate process. I didn't even mention the cost of the album sleeve.

Artist & Label Revenue - Yes, LPs are a premium product. It is extremely difficult to make money in today's music environment and even a fairly popular band will only receive a pittance from streaming. LPs are a major source of income for the band and the label needs to make money too. When you buy a new LP you are saying to the artist that you value their work and that you are willing to pay them a little bit of money for it. It irritates me that people like the article's author expect everything for minimal or free cost. Except for the rarefied upper level of artists (Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, et al.) the bands and performers we love don't make a lot of money.  Please don't begrudge them a few dollars from an LP.

The author of the article has a poor understanding of manufacturing and a worse understanding of the music industry. The LP business has nothing to with the mass market strategy he espouses. Nobody expects the volume of LP sales to grow to hundreds of millions of units per year. It's a boutique business catering to enthusiasts. It's like saying that Ferrari should mass produce its cars, lower the price to $20,000 per vehicle, and increase sales to a million cars per year. In other words, Ted Gioia is an idiot when it comes to business. I would not trust him to tell me how to run a coffee stand, let alone the entire music industry.

Love the ridiculous notion that this fad will fade as all the baby boomers fade away(die). I have several large record stores within a 20 minutes or less drive from my house in North Dallas, most 90% of the patrons are 30 to 45 years old and these stores are always busy. Talking to one of the principals of the business he said that their stores in Denver and KC are tcontinuing to grow at double digit rates and the demographic is similar. Also their e-commerce business is off the charts.

The notion that young people want to listen to music on their “telephones” (man you’re old “devices”) is valid to a point, portability is key and we are more active. Once these 20 something’s have some disposable income they may come learn more about higher end audio.