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(credit: Sony)
Sales of vinyl records have been on the rise for years, but according to the RIAA's 2022 year-end revenue report for the music industry (PDF), record sales hit a new high last year. For the first time since 1987, unit sales of vinyl albums outpaced those of CDs, vindicating all the people who have spent decades of their lives talking about how vinyl "just sounds better."
Although vinyl unit sales only surpassed CDs last year, revenue from vinyl records has been higher than revenue from CDs for a while now. In 2022, the RIAA says that vinyl albums earned $1.2 billion, compared to $483 million for CDs. The growth in vinyl was more than enough to offset a drop in CD revenue, helping overall physical media revenue climb 4 percent over 2021 (which was already way up over 2020).
Growth in vinyl revenue was more than enough to offset a drop in revenue from CDs. Vinyl unit sales have surpassed CD unit sales for the first time since 1987. (credit: RIAA)
Streaming services still account for the vast majority of all music revenue in the US—84 percent, up from 83 percent in 2021. The RIAA says there was an average of 92 million streaming music subscriptions active in 2022, which, together with digital radio and ad-supported sites like YouTube, generated $13.3 billion. The growth of streaming services and physical media comes at the expense of paid digital downloads, which accounted for a mere 3 percent of all music revenue in 2022.
“Imagine…a world…where time drifts slowly…”
For laughs, I pulled this copy of Pure Moods out of the free box while record shopping at End of an Ear.
The minute I saw the cover, I remembered that “Return to Innocence” song blasting during the infomercials:
I didn’t even bother looking at the tracklist until I got home — sure, there was Enya and Kenny G, but also Morricone, Vangelis, Badalamenti and Brian Eno?!? This thing is wild:
I wanted to know more about this crazy artifact from 1994. Luckily, Mina Tavakoli wrote a great review for Pitchfork a few years ago that delves into its weird history:
These were tracks and artists never designed to be played alongside one another, tracks and artists, for all intents and purposes, mostly foreign to one another except in essence. Their clunky but satisfying cohesion can be attributed to the cataloguing done by the Virgin heads, who arranged the piece on a lark, “stumbling into the project” as an experiment to determine if an album could be successfully telemarketed and sold far before its release date. The model, deemed “a huge buzz” after selling more than 2 million copies prior to its formal drop, would be replicated five times over with a tetralogy of sequels in the releases of Pure Moods II-IV.
“But what mood?” Meg asked me after I played her a few tracks.
“Pure moods,” I said. “Plural! There is no one mood, but they’re all Pure.”
I thought it would be hilarious to play my 10-year-old the album after pizza night. He got really into it, especially the infomercial.
“This is so cringe,” he said. “My classmates would love it.”
We started reciting some of the lines around the house. “Direct from Europe…”
He even went so far as to make a parody of the compilation called Cringe Moods:
Masterful parody of PURE MOODS from the 10-year-old ? pic.twitter.com/L7AJcjClwO
— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) February 23, 2023
And this is why you shop at your local record store.
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