Here’s the weekly update on the Canadian vinyl-CD sales race
Music obsessives (full disclosure: I am one. Duh.) are breathlessly tracking the 2024 sales race between vinyl LPs and CDs. The year began with vinyl stretching out a lead that looked unstoppable. But over the last two weeks, CD sales have seen an odd mix of news that’s good and bad–enough for the format to pull ahead for 2024.
Total year-to-date sales:
- Compact discs: 318,564 (good!) but down -19.8% from this time last year (bad!)
- Vinyl LPs: 305,797 (good!) and up 31.5% (VERY good!) but…
Sales for the week ending March 15:
- Compact discs: 32,186 (good!) and up 7.1% from the previous week. BUT during that same week last year, the number was 41,385, a drop of 22.2%
- Vinyl LPs: 26,360 (good!) and up 2.8% from the previous week. BUT that’s substantially less than CDs, causing vinyl to fall further into second place in the sales race.
Keep in mind that we’re only talking about new vinyl and not anything used sold at indie record stores, record shows, or online.
Finally, streaming. Canadians called up 11.6% more songs than during the same period in 2023. Audio streams for the most recent week dropped 1.5% to 2.701 billion.
All figures courtesy of Luminate.
