Vinyl
After helping to create the watery pink-and-gray cover art for Linkin Park‘s 2024 album From Zero, Frank Maddocks, the band’s art director, chopped the visual into five pieces and adapted them into collages for four alternate vinyl releases. “I wanted to develop these unique textures I could use for whatever kind of piece they could schedule, whether it was a different vinyl or CD configuration,” says Maddocks, Warner Records’ vp of creative, who has been working with the band on album artwork for 24 years. “It’s smart to think of, ‘What would be the next tier of this artwork?’ or, ‘How can it adapt and change?’”
From Zero came out with 17 alternate physical versions, known as variants, including 11 vinyl LPs, three CDs, a CD box set and two cassettes — and the combined sales of those variants contributed to Linkin Park’s debut at No. 1 on four rock album charts in late November, including Top Rock Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums. That may sound like a lot, but it’s now standard in today’s music industry, in which almost every hit artist, from Taylor Swift to Sabrina Carpenter to K-pop stars such as TWICE, ATEEZ and Stray Kids, markets highly priced variants to collectors and superfans.
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Today’s variant explosion is rooted in the early 2000s, when the Eagles’ 2007 album Long Road Out of Eden and AC/DC’s 2008 album Black Ice boosted their CD sales with heavily hyped Wal-Mart exclusives — and both landed No. 1 albums at a time when iTunes-style digital downloads dominated the business. In a way, these exclusives were the opposite of today’s variant explosion — each was available for sale at just one retailer. But they broke the dam. Up to that point, labels resisted deals involving exclusive albums for Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target, fearing spurned old-school record stores might take out their frustrations by short-changing other releases. After the Eagles and AC/DC successes, artists and labels realized they could provide exclusives and release multiple separate versions, for sale directly to consumers through their own webstores or to multiple retailers. K-pop stars became masters of this practice, encouraging superfans to buy every single variant.
“The idea of having consumers run around and collect them all, and pick the best version of an album, isn’t really new,” says Adam Abramson, formerly Elektra Records’ head of sales and streaming. “In the mid-2000s, we could’ve had four or five exclusives — there might’ve been a Best Buy CD with two bonus tracks, a Target CD-DVD combo, Trans World would have a poster, Circuit City would have a T-shirt, Hot Topic would have some kind of merch item, the indies would have a promo item.”
Once streaming kicked in, artists and labels quickly realized CD sales had a disproportionate influence on the Billboard 200, so they could boost chart performance by offering fans extra material, like concert tickets or merch. For a while, the Billboard charts allowed artists to bundle physical albums with concert tickets. But that all changed when Billboard banned the practice in 2020. “The ticket bundles going away was almost a tipping point that opened the floodgates,” says Mike Sherwood, former executive vp of global commercial marketing and strategy at Capitol Records. “They had to be replaced by something, and that something became, ‘Well, this vinyl thing is happening over here, and you can make different colors and weights and packages.’”
As a result, many of today’s biggest artists have gone to extremes in putting out multiple variants. Swift is the master of this approach, scoring a No. 1 album earlier this year with the help of 859,000 first-week sales, including six vinyl versions of The Tortured Poets Department. And every time she sought a chart boost, she rolled out more versions — including not just physical LPs and CDs but digital downloads — allowing the album to remain atop the Billboard 200 for 17 total weeks. At one point in May, Tortured Poets managed to stay ahead of Dua Lipa’s No. 2 Radical Optimism, which arrived with 20 physical versions.
According to Luminate, in early 2019, the top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 arrived with an average of 3.3 different versions of physical albums per week. By the end of 2023, that number had jumped to an average of 8.9 versions. During this time — which included the pandemic, the greatest gift to the vinyl business since Michael Jackson’s Thriller — annual LP sales jumped from 18.8 million to 49.6 million. “It’s a great revenue play and the margins are solid, and for many years, it’s been a growing business,” says Tom Corson, co-chairman/COO at Warner Records, Linkin Park’s longtime label. “K-pop, to some degree, helped unlock this market, as we learn from their ability to service the fan. If that manifests itself in a greater chart result, great.”
The multiple-versions trend has gone over the top in recent years. Travis Scott’s 2023 album Utopia arrived with 31 variants — and hit No. 1, of course. Last year, The Rolling Stones put out limited $38 vinyl editions of Hackney Diamonds with artwork representing each of the 30 Major League Baseball teams, while a Saltburn soundtrack variant containing “bath water filled vinyl” sold out at prices ranging from $60 to $175. K-pop acts helped to pioneer this device and show no signs of stopping: In 2024, TWICE’s With YOU-th came out with 14 CD and three vinyl variants; ATEEZ’s Golden Hour: Part.2 had 23 CDs, six LPs and three digital downloads — and both hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in their debut weeks.
One artist who pushed back — gently — on the practice was Billie Eilish, who said she would limit her variants on 2024’s Hit Me Hard and Soft to a conservative eight, all packaged with recycled materials, but wound up releasing 14. “We are doing everything we can to minimize waste in every aspect of my music,” she said at the time.
But there are business downsides to the multiple-variant approach. “Fans are talking it up and figuring out what color or version they want, and there’s a fun element to that,” Abramson says. “But you’re making people choose, oftentimes with limited resources financially, which one they want, knowing they can’t get them all. It’s a little unfair to get them to spend maybe 40 extra dollars to get one extra song.”
The market for endless physical variants may show signs of over-saturation: Fall Out Boy’s 2023 album So Much (for) Stardust dropped with 31 physical versions in its first week, but LP copies were marked down by 30% during a recent holiday sale from retailer The Sound of Vinyl, suggesting low demand. “It’s a point of differentiation if you have something other people don’t have — that’s a lovely thing and you can market around it,” adds Carl Mello, director of brand engagement for New England music chain Newbury Comics, which benefits from variants when labels release exclusive LPs and CDs for release-date events and Record Store Day. But, he says, “The vinyl colors have been so omnipresent. By the time the 12th color rolls around, the average consumer will be like, ‘So what?’”
Labels nonetheless remain committed to their multiple-variant strategy — although, according to Peter Standish, Warner Records’ senior vp of marketing, they should study which artists’ fans crave collectors’ items and which ones don’t. Warner’s analytics department attempts to predict how many copies of a given album might sell so it doesn’t lose too much money, given the expense and long lead times for LPs. “We are trying to offer at least one configuration that’s competitive financially — then maybe more elaborate ones, with more packaging, for a harder-core fan,” he says. “But you also want to balance that with not overwhelming them with choice.”
A version of this story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Instrumental soul music is not in high demand in 2025. But last summer, Fat Beats Records quietly moved hundreds of copies of El Michels Affair’s ‘Enter the 37th Chamber‘ — an anniversary edition of an album containing instrumental soul versions of the Wu-Tang Clan’s iconic hit “C.R.E.A.M.,” Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” Ghostface Killah’s “Cherchez La Ghost” and more.
The majority of direct-to-consumer sales came through TikTok Shop, an e-commerce platform inside the short-form video app that allows users to easily buy items without having to leave for another site. “We found some cool creators, sent them the vinyl, and they did an unboxing video, or talked about some of the tracks while playing the music in the background, and then linked directly to TikTok Shop,” explains Molly Bouchon, director of digital at Rostrum Records, which acquired Fat Beats in 2024. The El Michels Affair reissue is now sold out.
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TikTok Shop is relatively new and thus often overlooked by many artists and record labels, according to Itai Winter, vp of commercial partnerships at the marketing platform Genni, which helps match creators with music promotion campaigns. The fact that TikTok’s fate in the U.S. remains uncertain probably hasn’t helped; the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Friday (Jan. 10) about whether the app should be sold or shut down in the U.S.
Still, Winter estimates that “probably about a fifth of the For You page [on the app] are TikTok Shop-related posts” now. And harnessing that attention can pay off handsomely, at least when it comes to driving vinyl purchases: “We’re doing $15,000 to $20,000 in sales every month” through the platform, Bouchon says.
And she hopes there might be room to do more: “How do we make TikTok Shop a $40,000 or $50,000 a month revenue builder for us?”
TikTok officially rolled out TikTok Shop in September 2023 as part of a push into the lucrative world of e-commerce. “We have a very aggressive plan to make a splash in the industry and make sure that people out there understand that TikTok is a place for shopping,” Nico Le Bourgeois, head of U.S. operations for TikTok Shop, told The New York Times.
“With the number of people shopping on TikTok Shop every month nearly tripling since officially launching in September 2023, TikTok Shop is leveling the playing field so that any creator, merchant, brand and product can become a huge hit on our platform,” Le Bourgeois added in a recent statement to Billboard.
Genni became an official TikTok Shop partner as soon as it launched. “I got a really in-depth look and a chance to see what is actually driving sales,” Winter says. He frequently saw success when creators, rather than artists, posted about merchandise like records. Creators are incentivized to do so because they receive a commission on sales from links they share. Sellers can set commissions as they see fit; they’re often between 12% and 16%, according to Winter.
Alex F., who goes by plastic.disc on TikTok, is a self-professed “huge music nerd” who posts all manner of vinyl-related videos on the platform — “my $7,000 turntable set-up“; “more weird and unusual records in my collection!” He now often includes links to TikTok Shop and appreciates the commissions he receives from sales because they help feed back into his vinyl habit. (Though he would post the videos “even if I wasn’t making money — it’s what I love,” he says.)
These clips can spread far and wide: A plastic.disc post about Mac Miller’s 7″ single “The Spins” earned more than 2 million views, helping to move 744 copies of the record through TikTok Shop in a single week in October.
Winter has worked out a rough rule of thumb: A million views on a TikTok video with a TikTok Shop link usually translates to around $6,000 to $8,000 in LP sales. “It’s really convenient for people to see an unboxing video, think, ‘That’s cool,’ and go buy it,” says Alex F. TikTok has “primed their users to make transactions quickly,” adds Carly Redford, former director of e-commerce at Manhead Merch.
“I unfortunately know that,” Bouchon jokes. “I swear every day I get something from TikTok Shop.”
While TikTok Shop has the potential to turbocharge sales, many merchandise companies are not yet equipped to pivot rapidly to meet unexpected geysers of demand. They tend to work on months-long time horizons leading up to a release date. But release dates don’t matter as much on TikTok, which has consistently rejuvenated older songs.
As a result, “A lot of the fulfillment centers are having difficulty,” according to Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of the digital marketing company Songfluencer. “TikTok requires you to ship within two business days, and that’s tough for larger merchandise companies.”
One record that Winter was promoting went out of stock five times over the course of three months. In a way, this is a good problem to have. Still, “It can be frustrating,” he says. “You wake up to a viral video, and you’re selling 10 units an hour. Call the distribution center, and they’re like, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll send you another batch in two weeks.’ I’m like, ‘I need that yesterday.’”
Those delays mean that acts are leaving money on the table. On top of that, other TikTok Shop users may be siphoning off money that should go into artists’ pockets. Although TikTok Shop policy “expressly prohibits the unauthorized use of any third-party intellectual property rights,” Redford says, “There is so much bootleg merch [on the platform].”
This is a common problem on e-commerce sites. “That happens on Etsy, on Pinterest, on Facebook Marketplace, wherever,” Cloherty says. However, “None of those platforms drive even close to the degree of consumption and discovery that TikTok does,” he continues, which could make bootlegs on TikTok Shop more detrimental.
According to TikTok Shop’s Intellectual Property Rights report, published in October, the platform “implements proactive measures to identify and prevent potential infringements, significantly reducing their occurrence. Between July 2023 and June 2024, more than 5,254,000 products were prevented from going live.” In addition, “497,026 products were taken down after going live for IPR violations.”
Copyright owners can report infringement notices to TikTok Shop. In Redford’s experience, though, the most effective way for artists to combat bootlegs is to sell their own official products.
Despite success stories like El Michels Affair’s Enter the 37th Chamber, Redford still hasn’t seen many artists experimenting with TikTok Shop campaigns. “I feel like labels aren’t really focusing enough on it,” says Amy Hart, a digital marketer and co-founder of prairy, a new indie label. “We’re actively talking about it and figuring that side of things out.”
As with all things TikTok, it’s nearly impossible to determine in advance what products — and what videos — are going to cause users to smash the “buy” button. “TikTok Shop is tricky,” acknowledges Tyler Melton, who posts vinyl-focused videos of his own as tyler.fortherecord. “It will either not care about your video at all, or maybe the way you do your title or your intro will hook people.”
Winter’s biggest wins so far have come with vinyl. “We tried selling sweatshirts a couple of times, with only limited success,” he notes.
He believes the merchandise needs pizzazz — users may be unmoved by a simple T-shirt with an artist’s logo. (The El Michels Affair LP was described in one TikTok video as “a sick black-and-yellow” pressing, while a recent Wiz Khalifa vinyl reissue featured eye-catching “retro video game inspired artwork.”) “You can’t look at TikTok Shop like you’re uploading everything in your merch store,” Cloherty says. “It’s more like, what merch items can spark a TikTok-worthy moment?”
“This is all pretty new,” Bouchon adds. “Now I think we’re all realizing, ‘Oh shit, we need to prioritize this.’”
As Discogs marches towards its 25th anniversary later this year, the music discovery platform has announced new milestones in collection trends among its physical music-loving users.
According to fresh figures released Tuesday (Jan. 7), Discogs members cataloged over 105.7 million pieces of music in 2024 — an average of 2 million vinyl albums, CDs, tapes, 8-tracks and any other catalogable format you can think of per week.
Since its inception, more than 830 million items have been cataloged, with average collections — which are predominantly vinyl — hovering around 195 items per user, the company said. Collectors made sure to log a lot of copies of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, the year’s most collected album at more than 130,000, followed by releases from Charli XCX and Billie Eilish. The most collected artist of all time continues to be four lads from Liverpool and the most collected master is Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. The most collected individual release is the original 180-gram version of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, from 2013. (Incidentally, the label that released RAM — Columbia — is the most collected imprint out there.)
Jeffrey Smith, Discogs’ vice president of marketing, emphasized the significance of reaching 105.7 million records cataloged in a single year, noting that each record represents a “deliberate choice” by a real person to “hold, own, and listen to music with intention.”
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“Discogs continues to exist because people care deeply about music as something tangible and meaningful,” Smith added. “This collection milestone reflects a global community driven deeply by passion, connection, and an unwavering commitment to the music that shapes their lives.”
Discogs’ other function, as a viable place to buy and sell those physical music collections, is also hoping to hit a milestone this year. In early 2024, the company told Billboard that it wants to boost its online database to 25 million marketplace listings by its 25th anniversary in November 2025.
Here are some stats on Discogs’ collections:
Average collection size: 195 items
Average collection value: $317
Most collected album ever: The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
Most collected albums of 2024:The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift (130,000-plus)Brat, Charli XCX (40,000-plus)Hit Me Hard And Soft, Billie Eilish (40,000-plus)Short N’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter (30,000)Songs Of A Lost World, The Cure (27,000)
Most collected record ever: Original 180-gram vinyl of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories
Record label with the most items in collection: Columbia
Most collected formats:1. Vinyl2. CDs4. Cassettes
Over the past dozen years, vinyl records have grown from an indie-rock subculture to a significant, established part of the music business. In the U.S. alone, vinyl sales were worth $1.4 billion in 2023, more than CDs — and as much as Latin music — and they will probably be worth more than $2 billion worldwide by 2025.
As the market matures — and growth slows from spectacular to merely healthy — it’s also splintering. A part of the business once dominated by rock and reissues now looks more like the Billboard 200, and labels are releasing different kinds of records for different buyers — low-price products for big box retail, endless color variations for pop fans and, increasingly, high-end vinyl for audiophiles.
The descriptions of these products makes them sound quite impressive — as do the prices. If the new Joni Mitchell vinyl reissues just aren’t good enough for you — and they are very good — $125 will buy you Mobile Fidelity’s UD1S 180g 45RPM SuperVinyl 2LP Box Set, pressed from “analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe.” That’s about five times the price of most records. Mobile Fidelity is selling a few of Mitchell’s albums in that format, plus titles by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen and many more. It’s not the only company selling premium products, either: Analogue Productions is reissuing all the Steely Dan albums on 45rpm on UHQR vinyl for $150 each, plus putting out a treasure trove of deluxe Atlantic Records reissues to make the label’s 75th anniversary. (Both companies have been in business for some time.) The majors are doing this themselves, too. Back in 2019, Blue Note President Don Was launched the Tone Poet series, which reissues jazz records that sell for about $35. And in 2023, Rhino began releasing Rhino High Fidelity reissues of WMG albums, which it sells online for $40.
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All of these are marketed with the exacting specificity of supercar engines — it’s not just vinyl, it’s SuperVinyl! But how much better do they really sound — especially to an untrained ear on a home stereo? This is important to the music business — consumers will only buy so many $125 records if they don’t sound great. And I was also curious myself.
Here I must confess that I’m enough of an audiophile to understand about half of the jargon above. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a few dozen audiophile records myself, including two Mobile Fidelity Linda Ronstadt records (fantastic), a CBS Mastersound version of Bridge Over Troubled Water (incredible), and the Craft Recordings Small Batch pressing of Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul (like being in the studio). Others were just very good — and not worth the money. And I had never really sat down and compared different versions of the same record in any disciplined way. So I decided to do so. A few caveats: I have no real audio expertise; I listened on a very good home stereo, and it doesn’t make sense to buy records like this unless you have one; your mileage may vary. Here’s what I found.
I started with the Analogue Productions reissue of Steely Dan’s Aja because the album has a well-deserved reputation as a fantastic recording. I compared it to an early pressing I have, which is a detailed and vibrant record — it sounds great. This reissue just blew it away. The definition on the reissue was so impressive that on “Black Cow’ and “Deacon Blues,” I noticed sounds that I hadn’t really paid much attention to before. And while the older album sounded spacious, the new one sounded like I could point to which musicians were playing where. If you’re a Steely Dan fan, this is worth $150. If you’re not, this might make you one. It’s that good.
The other Analogue Productions reissue I listened to, Otis Blue / Otis Redding Sings Soul, is part of the company’s Atlantic 75 Audiophile Series, and I compared it to my copy of the album that came in a 2017 box set of Redding’s mono studio albums. (I compared these reissues to records I happened to own.) The Analogue version was more detailed and transparent — specific sounds stood out more. But the reissue was of the stereo version of the album, on which Redding’s voice is on one side, and I found that my less detailed mono version had more punch. I prefer the reissue, but it’s a close call.
The first new Mobile Fidelity album I played was Bob Dylan’s Good as I Been To You, which I compared to the 2017 European reissue. Neither record has much of a soundstage — it’s really just Dylan and his guitar — but the Mobile Fidelity version has more detail. For this album, though, that’s everything. Hearing Dylan’s fingers on the strings matters because the album is so intimate — it’s a portrait of a songwriter going back to the music that inspired him. The reissue makes a big difference.
Then I tried Mobile Fidelity’s $125 pressing of Joni Mitchell’s Blue. It’s astonishing. From the opening strums of “All I Want,” I felt like I could better hear more details on a familiar recording. I compared it to my 2007 reissue, which I prefer to an early pressing I used to own. The 2007 pressing is a great record, with the depth and spaciousness this album deserves, and I don’t have a bad thing to say about it. But the Mobile Fidelity pressing offered more space and detail. Here, the deluxe version is better, but it’s hard to go wrong either way.
Last I turned to two Rhino High Fidelity records. (Tone Poet pressings sound great, but I don’t have enough old jazz records to compare them to.) I’ve always been happy with the 2014 reissue of Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel, a quiet, clear pressing of a detailed recording. But the Rhino High Fidelity reissue blew it away: Details came out clearer, vocals emerged more forcefully, the music just seemed more lively. It just felt more there. Listening to the old record after the new one, it almost sounded veiled. Of all the records I played, this one delivered the biggest difference for the least amount of money. It’s a no-brainer.
I found less of a difference between the Rhino High Fidelity version of the Stooges debut and my 2010 reissue. This is a less detailed recording than Grievous Angel, by design, and it should hit harder – and both versions did. The deluxe version sounded a bit more present, but only if you listened closely. To get another perspective, I also listened to a 2005 CD reissue of the album, which I kept because it came with a disc of extra tracks, and I immediately noticed that it sounded lousy — shrill, unexciting, and hard on the ears at any volume. Here, both vinyl versions are great.
Obviously, pricey records have a limited audience. But at a time when so many music executives are talking about “superfans,” this seems like a product category worth keeping an eye on.
Sabrina Carpenter collects her second top 10-charting effort on the Billboard 200, as her holiday set Fruitcake reenters the Dec. 21-dated tally at No. 10, prompted largely by its wide physical release on CD, vinyl and cassette on Dec. 6. It joins her chart-topping Short n’ Sweet in the top 10, as it holds at No. 5. Fruitcake had previously peaked at No. 121 in 2023.
Fruitcake cooks up a big reentry thanks to major sales – the biggest sales week for any holiday album in four years, and the largest sales week for a holiday album on vinyl in the modern era (since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991). Fruitcake also got a big promotional boost from the debut of Carpenter’s Netflix holiday special, A Nonsense Christmas, on Dec. 6.
Fruitcake was initially released in November 2023 as a digital download album for purchase and through streaming services. The next month, it garnered a limited vinyl release, exclusively through Carpenter’s official webstore. On Dec. 6 of this year, the album became widely available on CD, cassette and three vinyl variants (including one exclusive to Target).
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In the tracking week ending Dec. 12, Fruitcake earned 54,000 equivalent album units (up 1,040%) in the U.S., according to Luminate, with album sales comprising 39,000 (up 27,326%; it debuts at No. 4 on Top Album Sales) and SEA units comprising 15,000 (up 210%, equaling 19.65 million on-demand official streams of set’s songs). Of the album’s 39,000 sales – vinyl sales comprise 31,000 copies.
The last holiday set with a bigger sales week overall (across all formats, physical and digital) was when Carrie Underwood’s My Gift debuted with 41,000 copies sold on the Oct. 10, 2020-dated chart.
Previously, the biggest sales week in the modern era for a holiday set on vinyl came just two weeks ago, when The Philly Specials’ A Philly Special Christmas Party bowed with 22,000 vinyl copies sold (Dec. 7 chart).
Back on the Billboard 200, with albums at Nos. 5 and 10, Carpenter is the sixth artist in 2024 to have at least two albums in the top 10 at the same time. Previously this year, Zach Bryan, Future, Metro Boomin, Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen all notched multiple projects in the top 10 concurrently.
Elsewhere on the charts, Fruitcake makes a sweet debut across multiple tallies: No. 1 on Indie Store Album Sales, No. 2 on Vinyl Albums, No. 2 on Top Catalog Albums and No. 4 on Top Album Sales. The set also zooms 47-3 (a new peak) on Top Holiday Albums.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. All Dec. 21, 2024-dated charts will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on Tuesday, Dec. 17.
Top Album Sales and Vinyl Albums ranks the week’s top-selling albums and vinyl albums, respectively. Indie Store Album Sales ranks the top-selling albums of the week at independent music stores. Top Holiday Albums ranks the week’s most popular holiday albums by equivalent album units. Top Catalog Albums ranks the week’s most popular catalog (older) albums across all genres, by equivalent album units.
Vinyl releases from Noah Kahan, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, MF Doom and The Beatles were among the top-sellers from Record Store Day (RSD) Black Friday 2024 in the U.S., according to data tracking firm Luminate.
The indie record store celebration, which took place on the day after Thanksgiving (Nov. 29) is a partner holiday to the main Record Store Day blowout that traditionally happens annually in April. Both occasions spur the release of many unique and limited-edition music releases, largely vinyl pressings, that are only available at participating independent record stores. More than 150 titles were slated to be released for RSD Black Friday 2024 festivities.
Kahan has the top-selling RSD Black Friday 2024 title, with his tiger eye brown-colored vinyl of Town Hall (Stick Season Collaborations). (See the full list of the top 25-selling RSD Black Friday 2024 albums, below.) The rest of the top five is filled out by Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft (Isolated Vocals), Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS (spilled) (on red and purple-colored double vinyl), MF Doom’s Operation: Doomsday 25 th Anniversary (on metallic silver with purple, and metallic silver with green-colored double-vinyl) and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – Music From the Movie and More… (on clear with yellow and pink splatter-colored vinyl).
The top-selling RSD Black Friday 2024 single was The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” / “I Saw Her Standing There” (on 7-inch vinyl). (Scroll down for the top 10-selling singles.) Other big-selling singles included titles from Pearl Jam and Stevie Nicks.
Top-Selling Record Store Day Black Friday 2024 Exclusive Albums at Independent Record Stores in the U.S.
Rank, Artist, Title1. Noah Kahan, Town Hall (Stick Season Collaborations) (tiger eye brown-colored vinyl)2. Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft (Isolated Vocals) (vinyl)3. Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS (spilled) (red and purple-colored double vinyl)4. MF Doom, Operation: Doomsday 25th Anniversary (metallic silver with purple, and metallic silver with green-colored double-vinyl)5. Soundtrack, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – Music From the Movie and More… (clear with yellow and pink splatter-colored vinyl)6. U2, How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb (black and red-colored vinyl)7. Kacey Musgraves, Deeper Into the Well (green-colored vinyl)8. Van Halen, Live In Dallas 1981 (red-colored double vinyl)9. Ramones, Greatest Hits (red-colored vinyl)10. Grateful Dead, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, New Haven, CT 5/5/77 (four vinyl LP set)11. The Doors, Live In Detroit (four vinyl LP set)12. The Allman Brothers Band, Manley Field House, Syracuse NY April 7, 1972 (orange, blue and splattered-colored triple vinyl)13 (TIE). Rage Against the Machine, Democratic National Convention 2000 (window pane clear-colored 180-gram vinyl)13 (TIE). Various Artists, Jazz Dispensary: The Golden Hour (golden wave swirl-colored vinyl)15. The Rolling Stones, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out (candy cane swirl-colored vinyl)16. Jimi Hendrix, Songs for Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts (blue and violet swirl-colored vinyl)17. Jerry Garcia, Electric On the Eel: August 29th, 1987 (orange sunshine-colored vinyl)18. Modest Mouse, Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again (vinyl)19. Joni Mitchell, Hejira Demos (180-gram black vinyl)20. Helmet, Betty (baby blue-colored double vinyl)21. Teddy Swims, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1.5) (baby blue-colored vinyl)22 (TIE). Yes, Fragile Outtakes (vinyl)22 (TIE). The Byrds / Buffalo Springfield, Live at the Monterey International Pop Festival (opaque orchid and opaque sky blue-colored double vinyl)22 (TIE). Morphine, B-Sides and Otherwise (lemonade yellow and black marble-colored vinyl)22 (TIE). Stone Temple Pilots, Purple Rarities (purple-colored vinyl)22 (TIE). Tegan and Sara, So Jealous (milky-clear translucent-colored double vinyl)22 (TIE). Thievery Corporation, The Richest Man in Babylon (red and white-colored double vinyl)Source: Luminate, for the week ending Dec. 5, 2024
Top-Selling Record Store Day Black Friday 2024 Exclusive Singles at Independent Record Stores in U.S.Rank, Artist, Title1. The Beatles, I Want To Hold Your Hand / I Saw Her Standing There (7-inch vinyl)2. Pearl Jam, Waiting for Stevie (Live) / Wreckage (Live) (12-inch 45-RPM vinyl)3. Stevie Nicks, The Lighthouse (white-colored 7-inch vinyl)4. Bluey, Rug Island / Bluey Theme Tune (picture-disc 7-inch vinyl)5. The Beatles, All My Loving (3-inch vinyl)6. Echo & The Bunnymen, The Killing Moon (12-inch vinyl)7. Jane’s Addiction, Imminent Redemption (12-inch vinyl)8. Steve Martin, King Tut (picture-disc 12-inch vinyl)9. Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come / Shake (white iridescent-colored 7-inch vinyl)10. Jungle, Back On 74 (12-inch vinyl)Source: Luminate, for the week ending Dec. 5, 2024
Over the past decade, vinyl has grown from a can-you-believe that comeback story to a serious business. Vinyl sales revenue in the U.S. grew 10% in 2023 to $1.4 billion, the same size as the market for Latin music. (The latter brings in far more money overseas. So, over the last few years, to feed demand, labels have started to release a growing array of products, from “collectible” color variations of hit pop albums to high-end products aimed at the audiophile market.
Rhino Entertainment, the catalog division of Warner Music Group, will announce today (Dec. 10) that it is launching a new premium reissue series, Rhino Reserves. The albums will retail for $31.98, with a level of quality higher than many reissues, for a price lower than higher-end audiophile reissues from Mobile Fidelity, which licenses albums from labels, or the company’s own Rhino High Fidelity albums. The first two albums, out Jan. 31 as part of Rhino’s annual Start Your Ear Off Right promotion, are Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel’s 1977 album Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs and New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint’s 1975 Southern Nights.
One impetus for Rhino Reserves is the success of Rhino High Fidelity, an audiophile line that sells for $39.98 online, in numbered editions of 5000 (although the company often releases more unnumbered albums, if demand is high). The High Fidelity releases are sourced from analog tape and pressed on high-quality vinyl, and a few have sold out, including box sets of Doors and ZZ Top albums.
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“This is High Fidelity without the bells and whistles,” says Rhino senior director of A&R Patrick Milligan. “But these are in retail,” unlike the Rhino High Fidelity releases, which are only sold online. Milligan says the series will be sourced from analog masters, with the same attention to detail as the High Fidelity Series, and that the records will be pressed at Fidelity Records Pressing, the new plant owned by company behind Mobile Fidelity reissues. (The High Fidelity series is pressed at Optimal, in Germany.) They will be cut by mastering engineer Matthew Lutthans, although the first two releases will be done by Chris Bellman.
There is already some competition at this level. Blue Note has done well with its audiophile Tone Poet jazz reissues, as well as a high-quality but lower-priced set of reissues. Mobile Fidelity, which has been releasing high-end reissues for decades, is now more active than ever, as is Analogue Production. Both of those companies license the rights to reissue albums from the labels that own the rights.
Rhino Reserves will not release albums on a particular schedule, and the hope is that it will feature some hard-to-find classics, like the first pair of reissues, both of which are beloved by crate diggers but hard to find in high-quality pressings. Reissue buyers seem to be becoming a bit more varied in their tastes, as the generation that grew up with songs from the sixties gives way to one raised on seventies and eighties music.
Townsend Music, a U.K.-based distributor and direct-to-consumer retailer, has been acquired by Artone, a Dutch business with a portfolio of companies that caters to the physical music marketplace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Townsend Music founder Steve Bamber called the acquisition “a clear opportunity to push its European expansion strategy forward quickly, with Artone’s well established sales, distribution and manufacturing facilities already in place.”
Artone can quickly scale up and meets its goal of becoming a global D2C company, according to sales director Bruce McKenzie. “Artone’s suite of services from vinyl manufacturing, EU physical distribution, and label services gives us perfect synergy to offer both our D2C clients and super-fan customers a super charged service,” he said in a statement.
Artone was formed in 2022 from the merger of Bertus Distribution and Record Industry, a vinyl pressing plant based in Haarlem, Netherlands. The portfolio of companies also includes Sound Factory, which provides artists and labels with solutions to sell exclusive content directly to consumers; two labels that release music in physical formats, Music on Vinyl and Music on CD; and V2 Benelux, which provides label services in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.
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“The acquisition is another welcome step for Artone’s continued expansion of its service portfolio and gives us presence in the UK market,” CEO Jan Willem Kaasschieter said in a statement. “This acquisition strengthens our position as a global leader in physical music distribution. We’re excited about the opportunities this will bring and look forward to driving the future of physical music together, developing further global reach and innovative solutions for the benefit of the music industry.”
Physical music sales continue to show strong growth as streaming takes a larger portion of the global market. In the United Kingdom, vinyl sales grew 13.5% and CD sales improved 3.2% in the first half of 2024, according to the Entertainment Retailers’ Association.
With vinyl sales continuing to rise and streaming growth slowing, the music industry is putting increased focused on reaching “superfans” willing to pay more for premium experiences and tangible products. The unmet opportunity to monetize superfans was a key talking point in Universal Music Group’s Capital Markets Day presentation on Tuesday (Sept. 17). “We’re creating and monetizing new ways to meet the superfans pent up demand for products, experiences and access that brings them closer to the music and to the artists that they love,” said CEO Lucian Grainge.
Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl has also made superfans a priority during his tenure. “One of the most important things is to figure out a direct relationship with the most valuable fans,” Kyncl said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on March 6. “Because it’s not only important to monetization and new revenue stream, but it’s also important to launching new music, which is the core of what we do.”
Effectively reaching superfans could be a lucrative endeavor for record labels. In its latest “Music in the Air” report, Goldman Sachs analysts put the global superfan addressable market at $4.5 billion—nearly 16% of the $28.6 billion recorded music market in 2023, according to the IFPI. Much of that revenue could come from music subscription services’ high-priced, high-value offerings that go beyond the current premium subscription tier.
Physical goods are a proven way to connect with superfans. Market research firm MusicWatch found that 20% of U.S. music fans are superfans for their favorite artists who go to concerts, buy merchandise and albums and would be wiling to spend more for VIP experiences from the artist. At the same time, more superfan sales are coming from the types of direct-to-consumer stores offered by Townsend. In the first half of 2023, U.S. direct-to-consumer sales tracked by Luminate increased 20% year-over-year.
While biking across Iowa this summer, Mark Michaels enjoyed a rare moment of reflection. “You’re riding about 80 miles a day among cornfields, and it gives you a lot of time to think,” the United Record Pressing chairman/CEO says. “I spent a lot of time while I was peddling thinking about United,” he adds of the oldest and largest American-owned, U.S.-based vinyl pressing plant in the world, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary this fall.
Michaels is speaking from his Nashville office, where he’s surrounded by signed records from Buddy Guy, Jack White and more of his icons, all expressing their thanks to him and his manufacturing team. (In 2014, White made history by recording, pressing and releasing a 7-inch of his single “Lazaretto” in under four hours, thanks to URP.) “It’s easy to forget those moments of euphoria and gratitude because you’re so focused on ‘How many records of this did we ship?’ or ‘What’s going on with that press?’ ” Michaels says. “But you don’t want too much life to pass by where you don’t stop and reflect.”
URP was founded as Bullet Plastics in Nashville in 1949, becoming Southern Plastics in the ’50s before landing on United Record Pressing in 1971. By the ’60s, a deal was signed for the plant to handle singles pressings for Motown, and in 1963, the first Beatles 7-inch, “Please Please Me”/“From Me to You,” was pressed, with a typo that spelled the band’s name as The Beattles.
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In 2007, a year before Record Store Day officially launched and just before the format was beginning its first-wave resurgence, Michaels bought the company — and helped sustain it through a particularly rough patch. As he recalls, half of URP’s output at the time was 12-inch singles created as promo records for DJs. “That was a lot of what we did, and shortly after I bought the company, the labels stopped doing that,” he says. “The DJs all got [music production software] Seratos, and the labels figured out that was a better business model. So all of a sudden, the health of the company was in serious jeopardy … We were doing everything to keep the lights on.”
By the summer of 2009, a career-changing order came in: a 50th-anniversary pressing of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (a favorite of Michaels) — the plant’s biggest order to date. Michaels himself oversaw quality control, checking a record at random every 30 minutes. “I remember one night, it was two in the morning and I’m in my office listening to these records, and I thought, ‘This is crazy, but goddamn, I’m lucky.’ And it just gave me this boost of energy. The next month, we got another order of that size.” Since, URP has manufactured vinyl for every major artist, from Adele to Taylor Swift.
In the early 2020s, URP faced another challenging period: the coronavirus pandemic. “Demand for vinyl exploded” during lockdown, Michaels says, but the orders put an unprecedented pressure on pressing plants to keep up. He says that was the catalyst for URP to expand, resulting in an $11 million project that built new infrastructure and supporting equipment and added 26 new presses. “The challenge is you can’t do that overnight,” he says. And now, not only can URP meet demand, but “the plant runs better than ever.”
He and his team of approximately 130 employees — all of whom have been sporting anniversary T-shirts that detail the plant’s various logos over the years — are now ready to toast such a feat and storied history, with Michaels saying the energy “is palpable” at the plant these days. A forthcoming celebration will bring together partners, customers, vendors and “people who support the format … There’s a renewed sense of pride and interest in what we do.”
Already, Michaels is focused on how to maintain it for the next 75 years, doubling down on the honor he has in keeping the process — and workforce — in Music City. “Seventy-five-plus years of history gives you a lot of gas in your tank in terms of pride,” he says. “You don’t make the first Beatles record in America, you don’t make all these Motown records, you don’t accumulate all this history and know-how and not have something special. And I never want to lose that.”
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024 issue of Billboard.
Anyone who has bought a vinyl record or a CD in recent years knows full well that physical music products aren’t exempt from the inflation that has plagued U.S. consumers.
In fact, the price of a vinyl record in the U.S. rose 25.5% from 2017 to 2023, according to Billboard’s analysis of RIAA data — slightly more than the 24.3% increase in the consumer price index over the same time. CD prices fared a bit better, increasing just 20.4%.
However, while music subscription prices are rising, consumers can probably expect physical music prices to remain somewhat level going forward: Insiders who spoke with Billboard say vinyl prices are remaining steady in 2024 after the COVID-19 pandemic created supply chain problems and raised the costs of everything from raw materials to labor.
As one music distribution executive put it, those supply chain problems are “flattening out.” As a result, turnaround times have improved drastically as manufacturers worked through their pandemic-era order backlogs. “I feel like the prices will flatten, too,” says the executive.
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“Our manufacturing prices have been stable for quite a while,” says Bill Hein, CEO of Pressing Business. Freight costs can be improved if a buyer books with flexible dates, Hein says, and reliable sea freight is being used for more of its U.S. deliveries. “Generally speaking, both air and sea freight are more predictable now than they were during the lockdown era, and prices are generally better.”
Outside of the music business, rising prices on everyday necessities have been a fact of life. Tired of the inflation that has eaten into their paychecks, Americans are pushing back against the high cost of staples, and companies are responding with attempts to reduce prices.
In July, PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta suggested consumers had grown tired of more than two years of rising prices. “Some parts of the [Frito-Lay] portfolio need value adjustment,” he said during a July 11 earnings call. Overall sales volume was down 4% in its most recent quarter, and North American beverage sales for the company dipped 3%. PepsiCo will respond, Laguarta said, by offering better deals and increasing advertising. For some consumers, Laguarta added, “we need some new entry price points.”
Companies across the economy are sharing PepsiCo’s experience with price-fatigued shoppers. Walmart is offering more short-term discounts. Target lowered prices. Fast food giants McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Taco Bell are courting customers through low-cost bundles and value-oriented menus. And because it’s an election year, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has floated a federal ban on price gouging in the grocery and food industries.
Since vinyl prices are based heavily on manufacturing costs, there’s little to prevent prices from creeping up without sellers losing profits. Vinyl retailers set prices based on wholesale costs and their need to cover overhead and other expenses. Artists on record labels must pay the wholesale price for their physical goods and don’t have control over pressing and printing costs, says Paul Steele, executive partner at Triple 8 Management. “Physical prices for our roster of nearly 30 artists have mostly stayed the same for a decade, with small inflationary increases here or there,” he says.
But aside from run-of-the-mill inflation, there are other factors that could push the average sale price higher. Physical music is increasingly a luxury good — a high-priced collectible item with packaging to match. Artists frequently release multiple variants of LPs with colored vinyl. And albums released today commonly have the expensive gatefold packaging that was common in the ‘70s.
The way music is released in the streaming era also drives up prices. Artists take advantage of the unlimited shelf space on streaming platforms by stuffing albums with more songs at no extra cost. As Billboard noted last year, the top 10 albums’ average number of songs rose from 13.2 in 2014 to 19.1 in 2022. A double album on a vinyl record is more expensive, and as one executive notes, putting more songs on an album will often — but not always — require paying more mechanical royalties to songwriters and publishers.
Indeed, some of the most popular vinyl records of the moment are double- or triple-LPs. Post Malone’s 18-track, two-LP album F-1 Trillion sells for $45.89 at Amazon and more at other retailers. Zach Bryan’s 34-track American Heartbreak has three LPs and a $44.98 list price. And that’s not to mention the more extravagant reissues, such as a 2-LP/2-CD/1-Blu-ray package for Van Halen’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge that carries a $99.98 list price.
Despite the increase in vinyl prices over the last several years, sales have yet to abate. Will that continue? The answer to that question will likely lie with younger consumers who have less disposable income. Michael Kurtz, co-founder of Record Store Day, says vinyl being a premium, collectible product is toughest on younger consumers. While Record Store Day succeeded in helping turn a new generation on to vinyl records, younger people don’t have as much money and are cutting back on their purchases. “A young customer 18 months ago would come to the counter with two or three records,” says Kurtz. “Now they come to the counter with one or maybe two.”
Catalog titles are often the more affordable option and help offset frontline price creep. Michael Jackson’s Thriller can be had for under $25. Fleetwood Mac’s perennial top-seller Rumours is offered in both affordable and more deluxe versions. Rhino Records’ Now Playing series of compilations for artists ranging from The Stooges to Gram Parsons to John Prine are priced at $19.99.
The good news — for all consumers — is that price growth is reverting to historical norms. The average monthly U.S. inflation rate reached 4.7% in 2021, 8.0% in 2022 and 4.1% in 2023. This year, the average monthly increase in the consumer price index (CPI) is just 3.2% through July. If vinyl prices seem like they’re continuing to creep upward, the packaging and the increasing prevalence of the double album are likely to blame.