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I’m going to make a prediction about the future of vinyl.
The next big wave of growth isn’t going to come from Taylor Swift. Or Billie Eilish. Or another reissue of Dark Side of the Moon.
I believe it’s going to come from artists you’ve never heard of… artists like you!
Now, that may sound crazy, because the vinyl revival we’ve been living through for almost 20 years has been driven largely from the top down.
First, it was collectors and audiophiles rediscovering vinyl. Then the labels started reissuing their catalogs. And for the better part of the past decade, superstar artists have taken vinyl collecting to another level, releasing multiple colors and variants that their biggest fans just have to own. And that’s helped turn vinyl back into a billion-dollar business.
But I think we may have reached “peak vinyl” for that business model of having multiple variants from superstars drive unit sales. I mean, the next Taylor Swift album may have 14 different vinyl colors, but how likely is it to outsell the last album? Probably not too likely, at least not in a needle-moving way.
This is why I think the next phase of vinyl growth is going to look very different. And I’ve got some pretty interesting data from inside Disc Makers that tells me why. Check this out.
This year, we expect to generate roughly the same amount of vinyl revenue as Disc Makers did back in the mid-1980s. Think about that.
Back then, vinyl was still the dominant way people bought music. Today, however, it’s a niche format. And yet, our vinyl revenue is back to about the same level. But here’s the craziest part.
Today, we’re manufacturing more than five times as many different vinyl titles as we did back in the 80s. Same revenue, five times the number of releases…
Which tells me that the future of vinyl may not be about selling a million more copies of a Harry Styles album on vinyl. It’s more likely about thousands and thousands of smaller artists selling 100 or 200 or 300 records each. This is a huge change for the industry, and for the vinyl format.
Because for most of the vinyl revival, independent artists were basically locked out. As vinyl started its unlikely rebirth some 15 years ago, we kept hearing the same question over and over: “Can you just press me 100?”
And for years, the economics simply didn’t work. So at Disc Makers, we spent the past 4 years figuring out how to make short-run vinyl affordable for emerging artists like you. We brought jacket printing in-house, invested in our own lacquer-cutting lathe, and we started making our own metal stampers.
And as we brought more of the processes in house, we eventually got to the number we were chasing: 100 professionally pressed records for under $1,000.
And that changed the game. Because now as an emerging artist, you don’t have to gamble thousands of dollars anymore to get your music out on vinyl. You can press 100 records. Sell them at your shows for 20 or 25 bucks. And make money.
And if they sell out? You just press 100 — or 200 — more.
This has opened up a huge opportunity for independent artists… because suddenly vinyl isn’t just for established artists with many thousands of fans. It works now for all sorts of niche and new and emerging artists.
Punk bands playing local shows. Jazz musicians. A hometown hip hop artist. The singer-songwriter playing a coffee house set.
And the cool thing is, artists are noticing — big time. In 2023, Disc Makers manufactured about 550 emerging-artist vinyl releases. This year, we’re on track for around 2,700.
That’s nearly five times as many releases in just three years.
And that is why I think there’s plenty of growth left for vinyl. It’s just going to come from a completely different part of the market.
Because there are millions of artists releasing music today. Most will never sell 10,000 records. Many won’t even sell 1,000. But they don’t need to.
Imagine 10,000 artists pressing 100 records. That’s a million records. Now imagine 50,000 artists doing it. That’s five million records — from indie artists most of the industry isn’t even counting on for vinyl growth.
And the crazy thing? Most of those sales won’t ever show up in the industry numbers, because the vast majority of small independent vinyl projects aren’t tracked by Luminate.
And I think there’s another piece to this that’s even more important. Every time a 19-year-old goes to see a local band and buys their first vinyl record at the merch table… odds are you’ve created more than a customer for that artist. You may have created a vinyl buyer for life. Which contributes positively to the vinyl flywheel.
Today’s vinyl market wasn’t built only by superstars. It was built in record stores. On college campuses. In punk scenes and dance scenes and jazz scenes. By people in clubs discovering a new artist and just having to buy that album at their merch table.
And I think that’s where vinyl’s next wave of growth will come from, too. Tens of thousands of artists pressing smaller quantities, selling directly to their fans, and creating the next generation of vinyl lovers in the process.
So if vinyl’s comeback was originally about rediscovering the past in the used record bins, I think its next chapter… is going to be about discovering what’s next.
And independent artists are going to lead it.
You can watch the original version of this blog as part of our Indie Music Minute series on the Disc Makers YouTube Channel.
Tony van Veen
Tony van Veen is the CEO of DIY Media Group, the parent company of Disc Makers and BookBaby. As a college student, he played in indie bands, created his own LPs, cassettes, and t-shirts, and sold them at shows. Today, he collects CDs, vinyl LPs, and concert t-shirts to support the artists he loves.
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