Here’s our weekly look at the Canadian sales fight between vinyl and CDs
People are not giving up on physical music. CDs are still the general currency of the realm, but vinyl, once given up for dead, dead, dead, is clawing back market share. Vinyl is already generating more revenue than CDs (mainly because new records are so damned expensive) and are probably selling more units if you take into account sales of used vinyl at indie stores, online, and record shows.
But let’s focus on new sales. Here are the latest numbers from Luminate, the company that monitors music consumption in Canada.
- Total CDs sold in Canada so far this year: 922,999 (down 15.9% from this point last year)
- Total new vinyl sold in Canada so far this year: 816,430 (up 28.5% from a year ago)
- CDs sold last week: 33,296 (up 24.9% from the previous week)
- Vinyl sold last week: 25,246 (up 24.6% from a week earlier)
Bottom line? CDs are still king but the gap between the two continues to shrink.
Here are some streaming numbers, just for fun:
- Songs streamed in Canada last week: 2,754,573,339 (up 0.4% from a week ago)
- Songs streamed in the country so far this year: 78,891,917,169 (up 11.2% from this point in 2023).
