By Owen Myers, The Guardian | For the first time in over four decades, US vinyl sales have topped $1bn in annual revenue. Vinyl purchases reached $1.04bn in 2025, per a new report by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) published on 16 March. It marks the 19th consecutive year of growth for the format that was once considered a niche interest.
Vinyl sales grossed 46.8m in 2025, marking a rise of 7.9% from 2024’s takings of 43.4m. CD sales brought in less than a third of vinyl’s profits with $312.4m in revenue, while other physical formats such as cassettes brought in $25.8m.
The explosive resurgence of vinyl has been led by Taylor Swift’s canny marketing of the format as a collectible. Her 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl was last year’s bestselling vinyl release, with 1.6m vinyl sales alone.
Swift released a total of eight vinyl variants of The Life of a Showgirl with alternate cover artwork and LP colors. Some editions came with extra material from Swift, such as a Target exclusive that came with previously unseen photos, a double-sided poster, as well as a poem penned by Swift. Other editions were only available for 48-hour windows through Swift’s web store.
As well as vinyl, Swift’s embrace of CD, cassette and digital download formats helped The Life of a Showgirl shatter music records upon its release. The singer released at least 34 variants of the album in total. The album racked up 4.002m US sales in its opening week in the highest ever first week sales recorded for an album. Of that figure, 1.3m sales were vinyl.
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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/mar/16/vinyl-record-sales-us-taylor-swift