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I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low. I wouldn’t doubt if the number of buyers who don’t own a record player is even higher tha 50%, and that the percentage of people who actually play the records is actually 10-20%. I don’t have data on that, it’s just a hunch.

Many of us in the indie music industry (hip hop sustained record plants for many years, arguably until independent music started pressing in the 2000s) have mixed feelings about records. It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. And they’re cubersome to bring on tour.

But there isn’t another physical medium that sells at all as well as vinyl. Soft apparel always does well. But people want vinyl.

I don’t love the Gen Z framing of this though. Vinyl purchasing at this point is multi generational.

I don’t think it’s some mysterious Gen Z love of physical. I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. Buying digitally is just isn’t the same for a lot of people (even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists).

My dad grew up in the 50s & 60s. During COVID he purchased my daughters' the, I quote, "shittiest briefcase record players" he could find. Both girls listen to their music on their devices, but also buy vinyl. The other day, my eldest came down from her room complaining that her vinyl "sounded awful". I told her to bring it up with their Grampy. His response: "you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awful playback on shitty record players like I had to.". My eldest is now plotting a complete hifi system, and is learning all about how to transfer "vinyl" to "digital" without losing the parts of the vinyl she likes.

This was a 5 year play by my dad. Shout out.

Analog purchases have become much more of a signaling mechanism than for direct consumption.

In my family group there were a good numbers of vinyls gifted this past christmas and none of them are going to be regularly listened to as the majority of music consumption they do is "on the go" in the car or mobile.

Similarly, I'm seeing them make more purchases of "trophy books" where they read the book on their phone or listened to the audiobook but liked the book so much that they want to have it on their shelf (there are also special editions with elaborate edge decorations, etc. that seem to feed into this).

I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now?

I support artists I like by going to their shows and buying lossless digital copies where possible (even if I listen to their music elsewhere).

But I don't want or need more physical "stuff".

Guilty party, here. I feel I can explain myself though, or at least offer context about why I own about a dozen records and no way whatsoever to play them.

I’m a recovering audiophile. I got into the hobby because I enjoy technology in its myriad aspects, and had discovered that good speakers can make things sound better. As I began accruing CDs and re-ripping into lossless audio, I also began collecting vinyls via Record Store Day events of bands or artists I found interesting at the time, or the odd Collector’s Edition bundles of albums or games. The thinking was that when I finally settled into my own place, I could invest into some Hi-Fi kit to play them back.

Well, I fell out of the audiophile sphere when I got into data analysis, physics, human biology, and psychology: I had become inoculated against the bullshit that permeates the space, but still recognized the value of my album collection. I’d also pivoted into preservation, and so I began accepting relatives’ collections of older formats, like 78s. I still lacked playback mechanisms, though I now had the space and budget - just more pressing projects than a record playback setup.

And so here I am in 2025, in an apartment that transmits energy between units, with an upstairs neighbor that does somersaults and tumbles all day (thus shaking the space slightly). The cost of everything has skyrocketed, but it’s no longer a matter of a turntable and a phono stage to get going (need isolation as well, and that ain’t cheap). I’ve also - shockingly - got other, more pressing projects in front of me, one of which is a bedroom Hi-Fi setup that has physical controls for music streaming instead of smartphone apps - again, not remotely cheap.

Right now, my meager collection sits in a crate under the sofa, languishing. One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day.

Seems relevant to bring up that I'm currently working on a device that I hope will bridge the gap between vinyl and digital for some people: https://sleevenote.com

I was in this demographic for a log time. I wanted to support small artists in ways past just going to their shows. This seemed like a nice way to do that (not a big shirt guy for bands). It also helps that you are not only getting music but a large(ish) art piece as well with the vinyl covers. It also feels good to physically have and own something. I recently bought a Portable CD player as well. I think a lot of the Gen Z folks I talk to are starting to (if just wishfully) drift back towards physicality in some ways.

As a millennial I think I was probably in the first generation who first started buying vinyl not because we had record players, or preferred the sound of vinyl (although some claimed to), but because when most of us came of age during the time of iPods and mp3 players, if you were going to buy physical media to support an artist, vinyl was probably your best option.

CDs were rapidly heading in the same direction as tape (and continue to), and both were less romantic and felt in many ways a less "authentic" format than vinyl did. The physical aspect of vinyl has a beauty that simply isn't replicated by the CDs optical storage system or the tapes magnetic storage.

Another thing I'd add is that I have a craving for analog more and more in my life these days, especially in music and other media formats. Everything is so polished and so clean that the novelty of the quality has worn off, and everything around you instead feel increasingly unnatural.

As an analogy, I've always thought it was interesting how awful the hologram quality is in Star Wars given they have extremely advanced technology otherwise. But if they were in perfect HD although they would be better from a functional perspective, there would also be something less romantic about them. It's hard to put my finger on why I feel that way, but I think the same is true of lots of technologies. When street lights are replaced with LED lights, they are more functional, but they're also less romantic. Or if you look at food packaging from the 50s, there's something romantic about the materials, colours and print used vs today's plastic packaging and digitally designed labels.

Anyway, I guess this doesn't surprise me at all and I think it totally makes sense, although I suspect most people don't even really rationalise why they're doing it. Vinyl just feels right because there's something more authentic and real about the format.

I make up for them buy currently owning 10 of the damn things. One for the main house stereo, 2 in a DJ setup in the basement, one for my all-tube Harman-Kardon setup in the office, 4 in the ready-to-sell stack, and 2 nostalgic display pieces that just collect dust.

880 full length albums in my 12" collection, with pressing dates between sometime in 1955 and this October 2025. 70 years... They all get fairly regular rotation, I alternate between choosing something I feel like listening to, and using the Randomize button in Discogs.com where I track my collection.

A someday project is to figure out how set up an automated workflow to use ambient song detection/recognition to magically recognize when I am playing an album and scrobble it to last.fm to track my plays. It's nothing I want to do manually but it would be neat to see my own analog spotify wrapped summary.

What do people do with the vinyl then? Collect it like baseball cards?

Funnily I'm in the complete opposite cohort. I own a record player, because stereo sets used to come with one even when vinyl was on the decline already. I have less than a handful of records which I ever only played out of curiosity.

Anemoia exists, I guess.

I have 2 (and a spare for parts) tts and a DJ mixer to allow crossfading (it's a 4 channel because it was the cheapest usable thing available). I threw in moderate Audio-Technica MicroLine cartridges in both and had to get a digital scale and some other calibration crap because these tts are some relatively cheap with a bunch of adjustments lacking interchangeable cartridges. I'm at around 10 milk-crate sized storage boxes and have stopped buying almost entirely. It's not a "purist" rig at all (I'm allergic to audiophiles) considering it feeds into a Marantz NR1711 that has Tidal and a PlexAmp Pi that drives a couple of Elac Debut mains and an SVS PB16.

I've been on a physical media craze lately. It's been quite a few years since I stopped using Spotify, and I've been rebuilding my collection. Usually by hunting CDs at thrift stores to rip in iTunes to Apple Lossless. I own a bunch of vinyl records, and I've also ripped several of them.

After buying one vinyl album from a niche artist (djpoolboi), he actually then sent me a link to download the same tracks on flac, which I appreciated.

Lately I've found myself buying the same album both on vinyl for listening to at home, and on CD to rip for my digital music collection.

I work from home a lot so having to get up to flip the record gives me an excuse not to stare at my screen all day too.

Also just in:

Half of all buyers of scented candles actually burn them.

Half the buyers of those fancy soap bars in the shapes of fruit or whatever actually use them as soap .

Half of all shutters on houses can actually be closed to "shutter" the windows

Physical media collecting is about a lot of things but one of them is to have a physical artifact representing your relationship with an artist and the art to have in your home to touch, hold, pick up, and display. Makes sense to me.

I myself am a DVD enthusiast (in so far as I have a copy of TDK trilogy and Raimi trilogy plus a few other classic movies/shows and songs from the 00s). There are a few shows that I enjoyed as a teen and the fact is I no longer have a way to even legally watch them in my country, so for me the ability to never lose those movies despite streaming platforms being around is the main motivator. (However I do not have a functional DVD player anymore which sucks).

So I think lets not shame people for what they do on their own time that affects none of us really.

Makes sense. Most kids I know put records up on their wall as art. or as a way to pay artists directly by purchasing their album at a concert

If you want to listen to music then Spotify runs circles around vinyl as a medium. Records really suck for music quality which is why everyone dumped them when tapes came along and then even more so when cd's became a thing.

If Vinyl was a good medium to listen to music then no one would have bought cd's or had a Spotify subscriptions.

I can't imagine people going back to old school crt televisions to watch sports or movies either, but I do see people

I've been buying LPs after concerts just to have a nice souvenir, I can always listen to them on Spotify. I only just got a turntable this Christmas and it's cool to actually listen to them.

At least some vinyl buyers who don’t own record players may be buying them as gifts for people who have them.

Last Christmas, I bought 3 vinyl records as gifts. I don’t own a record player.

I have a USB record player in storage. I have a number of old albums; mostly for keepsakes. I have a few Tangerine Dream picture disks (including one, cut into the shape of Poland), and a few records that have been out of print for ages.

I don't think of them as "investments," though. I don't think they're actually worth that much.

I have the music on them as digital files that I got from Apple Music, though (I have an Apple One sub). Much better quality sound.

I know a lot of people who use them as decoration. As someone who has been buying and listening to vinyl records for a long time I find it a bit odd but I understand it. Going into a friends home and checking out their book collection or record collection used to be a fun thing and tells you a bit about someone. Now that everything is digital that is completely gone so having a few of your favourite records around, even if you don't listen to them fills that void.

I'm not buying vinyl records, but I still have a ton of them, and my ancient record player broke down ages ago. Similarly, I've got tons of CDs I'm not using anymore. The fate of old media, I guess. But I do miss selecting a specific album to listen to. Spotify is not the same.

I guess I'm in the market for a new record player. Is that market picking up again?

And 50% of that are for showing off their oddity in their social networks. The WTF factor. Do something archaic.

OP here. I wrote an analysis on the divergence between streaming saturation and physical media growth. Physical media has shifted from an audio format to a "token of identity" or a support mechanism for artists in an era where streaming payouts (marginal value) approach zero.

It's just a cool piece of merch to me.

Artist make no money off streaming. This is a real artifact I get to own, keep sealed and maybe get signed.

I did have the unfortunate experience of buying a D12 Devil's Night vinyl to find the cover image quality to look like some intern copied it off Google images.

In a music shop a few weeks ago, I had to explain to a young man that the opening of the inner sleeve should be inside the outer cover so that the record that he'd just purchased (for a crapload of cash) did not fall out. Sweet really.

Guilty! I have bought a handful of vinyls (limited edition, colored vinyl, etc.) in anticipation of saving up to buy a good quality turntable.

And these were all artists and albums I know and love through CDs or streaming, so it's not like I'm buying them blind.

yeah, those crazy people who gift vinyl to people and collectors who want to make a profit are craaaazy people. (this is sarcasm, these are normal things (not at all an exhaustive list) that might make you buy a vinyl without owning a turntable)

also, we're probably getting some really good stats with this stuff with the folks buying at their local record store, right?

by the way, what was the phrasing of the question they used to get this information?

that is so dumb, but also buying shirts and merch that you are not going to wear at all is also dumb and i guess the vinyl is smaller size

I have a couple of vinyls, no player too :-)

I buy them because I like to see the cover & lyrics while listing to it (mp3).

I would buy and play vinyl if the music I listen to (renaissance, baroque) was actually released on vinyl.

I wonder if used vinyl purchases would skew this number more towards "owns a turntable".

The actual title of the article is "Why Gen Z is Driving the Vinyl Record Boom?".

99% of toy collectors don't take their toys out of the boxes to play with them.

I think a lot of people in the comments here are missing the point in a lot of ways.

The first is that even if people don't own a record player at the moment doesn't mean that they don't plan on getting one. I have multiple nieces/nephews who got record players (at their request!) this year for Christmas. Briefcase record players are becoming ridiculously more popular. The thing is there's no point in buying a record player if you don't already have some records, and artists are doing a lot more limited prints so sometimes you need to buy immediately to be sure you're going to get one.

My wife and I bought a new sound system in 2024, and we decided to include a record player. We have used it way more we had expected to. We still have streaming services (Tidal) but listening to a record has a ton of benefits. There's the fact that the entire album itself is an organized experience, not just random tracks, and the tactile nature of it is really appealing. The albums themselves are like pieces of artwork in a way that a CD or screensaver would never be.

It's also nice knowing that the artist I'm buying from is getting real money from the purchase, unlike the pennies they get from streaming.

I buy for someone who does own a player, but I do not own one.

Yup, sold my turntable a while ago but kept my favorite ~20 albums. I rotate through them, displaying them on my bookshelf. They look great. They're art, they're vibe, they're decoration.

(Ultimately I went all-in on smart speakers, so I couldn't just hook up the turntable anymore, and getting a turntable/adapter that digitizes the audio to send over Bluetooth, just no...)

If they really want the old-school analog experience, you need a turntable and a cassette recorder so you can make mix tapes for your friends. We didn't have 'playlists', we had mix tapes. Also, to have in the car for road trips. Also, I must go and yell at that cloud now. Excuse me.

What half am I supposed to be surprised by?

So I had a year or two in the same situation, old sony turntable had door mechanism fail and the stylus I had wore out and didn't have an easy replacement. Got a sound burger for Christmas and it’s pretty great for casual use (it stows away nicely).

Most of my collection I did get for the art or to support the artist more directly (there’s one I always buy the test pressings from on every album he puts out, I get to hear it like a month before release).

My dad has a pretty big record collection, he didn’t play them a ton, what we would do was dub them to metal cassette and listen to those so it wouldnt degrade the records. So there’s a boomer equivalent to using streaming over playing the original physical copy.

It's all NFTs

Not too surprising. Most vinyl records come with a digital download code. So you can still listen to it on your phone or wheverever else, and have a nice collectable to go with it.

Lots of negative comments about vinyl here, from people who have no clue. I collect vinyl because it sounds better. Vinyl has a warmer sound that is missing from digital formats.

Streaming is convenient for travel and great for previewing music, getting recommendations etc. But if I want to sit back and truly enjoy albums that I love, that’s where vinyl comes in.

I have a decent sound system. Buying albums on vinyl that I’ve listened to 100’s of times and playing through the system blows me away. I’ve been unable to get the same effect or quality from digital, despite trying everything aside from a $2000+ DAC. Wired streaming. Lossless. Various services and formats. CDs. Technically better quality. My ears disagree.

At the end of the day, vinyl is more enjoyable for me and many others. It’s a better experience.

To quote Trent Reznor:

VINYL MISSION STATEMENT

IN THESE TIMES OF NEARLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, WE'VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF THE PHYSICAL OBJECT. OUR STORE'S FOCUS IS ON PRESENTING THESE ITEMS TO YOU. VINYL HAS RETURNED TO BEING A PRIORITY FOR US - NOT JUST FOR THE WARMTH OF THE SOUND, BUT THE INTERACTION IT DEMANDS FROM THE LISTENER. THE CANVAS OF ARTWORK, THE WEIGHT OF THE RECORD, THE SMELL OF THE VINYL, THE DROPPING OF THE NEEDLE, THE DIFFICULTY OF SKIPPING TRACKS, THE CHANGING OF SIDES, THE SECRETS HIDDEN WITHIN, AND HAVING A PHYSICAL OBJECT THAT EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD WITH YOU. ALL PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND MAGIC. DIGITAL FORMATS AND STREAMING ARE GREAT AND CERTAINLY CONVENIENT, BUT THE IDEAL WAY I'D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK (WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE TURNED OFF) AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME. -TRENT REZNOR

It seems like a silly cargo cult to me. It feels like ewaste compared to a poster

Maybe they call it a Vinyl Disc Player?

Ive got 1300 records and I dont live in the USA. So there!

I buy vinyl for one reason - it forces me to actively listen to the music. My teen daughter does the same.

I have many happy memories of getting a new record as kid, laying in the floor and listening from start to finish while poring over liner notes and album art. There was a level of connection with the music that I just don’t get from listening to Spotify while I’m washing the dishes or something.

I know it’s sentimental, but I get so much joy out of watching my daughter do the same thing now. She has a blast going to our local record store, finding records from her favorite bands old and new and then coming home and just listening. No devices, no distractions, just her and the music she loves. In a sometimes horrible and depressing world, it’s a sweet escape.

Vinyl record covers are nicely-sized artworks for displaying in a room.

Listening to an album you love, while taking the time to flip the record or tape, or taking the time listen to an entire album in your streaming service of choice, helps you to notice things and be present.

Recommended film: Perfect Days by Wim Wenders - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days

Recommended book: Bridge of Waves by W.A. Mathieu - https://www.shambhala.com/bridge-of-waves-288.html

In 02026: Slow down, and fix things.

Slow is smooth.

Smooth is fast.

So, the advantages of physical media are much touted these days, but all the actual physical media we have are yesteryear's technology, and each come with their own unique problems, plus there is the problem of waste. Why isn't a new physical format taking hold?

Something like Bandcamp-style downloads, which you put on a micro SD card. You put the card in a 3d-printable piece of plastic, resembling a cassette case. When you buy the download, the band sends you a printed piece of paper (the inlay for the cassette case thing) saying “limited edition run #1, Sequence Number 465/2000; thanks for your support”. If you want to get fancy, maybe record the transaction in some kind of ledger; perhaps put the buyer's name on the band webpage as a patron.

For the software, perhaps there could be something open source based on hardware like the anbernic rg355xxsp and similar devices (multipurpose, portable, hackable by design, …)

It would take very little to get it established: A critical mass of bands in some genre getting together, their fans getting on board, and things spreading from there.

I am one of these people. I buy to support the artist (usually $40-$50 for an album), but listen to the digital versions via Jellyfin and Plex (to avoid Spotify). I’ll also donate directly to artists, or buy tickets to their shows even if I cannot attend. Great analysis.

I have a handful without a record player; they make fantastic, cool wall art. That is the extent of why i buy them. I have no intention of ever buying a record player.

As someone who grew up with only vinyl in the 60s and 70s, I would never choose it over a CD for audio quality.

BUT I would enjoy recreating the rituals that go with playing vinyl: obsessive cleaning of the disks, the gentle manipulation of a delicate tone arm, and the soft thud when the turntable cover drops. Playing a record was a minor event to be savored. I doubt the younger generations are getting all of that right.

It gives me hope for the future to see the young'uns recognizing instances where progress isn't necessarily progress. If you oversimplify audio history as 70s=vinyl, 80s=cassettes, 90s=CDs, 00s=MP3s, and 10s=streaming, they've parted ways somewhat with the current moment and gone all the way back to the 70s. Ironically as an older fart myself, who once owned numerous records ("vinyls" is a newer term), and later cassettes, and later CDs, I guess I eventually decided I'd had enough authenticity and converted the whole lot to MP3s and stuck with that when streaming came around. So when I parted ways with the now, I only went back to the 00s, and that was mainly to retain control/ownership rather than having yet another damn algorithm mediating my experience. It's a sweet spot for me - maximum convenience while not giving up intentionality.

Another aspect of this is that a band or label really need to hit a minimum sales quota to justify pressing albums, so people buying vinyl are actually helping them more than they would be by simply donating the profit of a vinyl purchase (which is of course not the retail price of vinyl). Bands want to release, and this helps them do it.

Preordering product – whether books, vinyl, or digital – really, really helps self-funded artists and indy arts business.

Keep it up, kids! :-)