New study finds growing vinyl sales are essential for a healthy music industry
A recent study has found that healthy vinyl sales go hand-in-hand with a healthy music industry as the format is essential to helping artists particularly at a grassroots level.
The study by Components found that vinyl sales are “strongly positively associated with the amount of money that artists make on the platform [Bandcamp], and that among all types of objects sold, this association is strongest with vinyl records.”
Furthermore, it explained that “the purchase of physical objects becomes increasingly common among buyers as they spend more money overall, with vinyl alone encompassing more sales than all other physical objects combined. In other words, the format is a disproportionately important channel of spending.”
Essentially, vinyl is not only the most profitable medium for the artist but it also helps to drive further engagement. This has been ratified in the past by separate studies that have found vinyl buyers spend more on supporting the industry in general by proxy of the engagement involved with the process.
Components study also found that this sense of engagement driven not only by the experience of buying vinyl, but also the physical act of playing it is something that draws us towards the format. They argue “that people’s identification of vinyl’s tactility ultimately points to the object’s potential for what [John] Dewey understood as aesthetic experience, as contrasted with the un-aesthetic gravitational pull exerted by most forms of streaming.”
“As we have argued in prior work,” they state, “this form of experience possesses irreducible value, and is thus something people pay for.” In essence, the process of placing the vinyl on the turnstile, setting the rpm, dropping the needle and everything else involved adds value to the listening experience and so we are more likely to pay for it.
Ultimately, they conclude that having something to hold also makes us simply care more about the industry. As the closing statement reads: “That Silicon Valley has provided us with the anaesthetic and non-tactile is why it so often leaves us with nothing to care about much at all. And it’s why it has so much trouble working out the kinks of getting us to pay for it.”
The physicality of vinyl encourages a transaction and that is not vital for artists struggling to earn money in other areas amid a crippling economic downturn. So, if you want to support the industry: buy vinyl when you can, and buy independent if you can.
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