Sales of vinyl have pretty much exploded over the past six years. They grew by 44% in 2010, 39% in 2011 and 19% in 2012. At first glance, this seems huge, especially when you take into account that music sales in general have dropped over 60% from their peak. However here’s the dirty little secret you probably haven’t read so much about; Look more closely and you’ll quickly realize that vinyl isn’t so huge at all.

Vinyl can still be an extremely meaningful supplement for some niche bands, artists and audiences. If you can make money selling it, definitely do. I & other fans may buy it. However, in the grand scheme of making music sustainable in the 21st century? It doesn’t really matter much at all.

It is most definitely not going to ‘save the music industry’ so to speak and if we continue to promote our personal interests about loving vinyl, we might just end up hurting musicians far more than helping them.

On an extremely personal level, I like vinyl and would love to own plenty of them, and I also get the appeal. That said, I also know that I fall in an extremely tiny minority. I can’t deny the true scale of the format, or what really has to be done to make musicians earnings grow to a sustainable size again. Here’s a hint: It has nothing to do with selling discs.

How Big is The Vinyl Market?

Recently, a marketing agent for a vinyl-by-mail company called Feedbands wrote an Op-Ed for Digital Music News.

Now, marketing agents and PR people write many fantastic “news” stories and each time whatever they write they stay accurate and intellectually honest but this one got my mind rambling. Beginning with a mis-leading title like “Why Vinyl Is More Important to Artists Than Streaming, Touring, and T-Shirts”, it seemed to me personally to be deserving of an honest and well thought out response.

As part of the piece, the author says that “musicians tend to make about 2% of their income from the sale of non-­musical physical merchandise like t-­shirts, hats, and posters”, but to suggest that vinyl is more significant than these or any other streams of revenue is impossible on a number of levels. It’s not just misleading, it’s flat out wrong.

Let’s begin by looking at the larger numbers. The total music industry revenues for 2012 were about $16.6 billion, which may sound like a lot until you realize that at their peak they were over $50 billion.

Meanwhile, vinyl sales in 2102 were around $160 million. This is a lot less than 2% of the total. In fact, it’s less than half that, to be a bit more accurate under 1%. So even if vinyl defied any sense of scale or reason and suddenly grew by 100%, it’s still not likely to touch merchandise as a percentage of revenue.

It doesn’t stop there however. The information that musicians only make 2% of their income from merchandise sales also isn’t right to begin with!

To arrive at that figure, the author cites a survey that includes responses from teachers, composers, symphony performers, wedding band musicians and all sorts of other people who make $0 in both merchandise sales, simply because that isn’t their sphere. In fact, 88% of them made no money from merchandise and 66% of them made no money from CDs, downloads or streaming.

If you look at the numbers and then look at the portion of musicians who made any money from selling merchandise, it turns out that they made more than 16% of their income that way. For artists that sell any merchandise at all, it turns out to be the second largest slice of the pie of earnings after live performances. It was bigger than recorded music revenue and songwriting royalties combined. That’s something, isn’t it?

It’s also worth mentioning that all of the artists who contributed the maximum to vinyl sales last year are on labels. Many of them are on major labels. This means they have to share a large portion of that revenue, just like with CD sales. Which implies the author’s next statement that “500 records sold at $15 each means $7,500 in extra income for you or your band” is also misleading.

Most self-released artists/bands, who could be new on the scene might not sell 500 copies of their record on any format. To make this even more clear, we should compare sales of vinyl to other major formats. If we look at CDs alone (the market of which has also fallen considerably, it still makes up more than 40% of the paid music market) they currently outpace vinyl sales by a factor of roughly 3,000%.

If we wanted an increase in vinyl sales to merely make up for the 13% loss in CD sales this past year, then we’d need them to grow by about 350% next year, which seems unlikely. In fact vinyl growth is already slowing, and CD sales are going to continue to shrink much faster than vinyl could ever grow to make up for it.

Now, the people putting out such information aren’t the only ones causing us to ignore the real problems and impeding us from finding real solutions. Many a times, we mislead ourselves, unwittingly.

Recently, a thought crossed my mind – “If we change the perception, do we change the result? Have we forgotten how to market music? Is the low sound quality of most digital mediums a turn off?”

Here’s the reality: Modern digital mediums don’t have low sound quality. By any objective standard, it’s actually far better in terms of raw sound quality than vinyl is. Not just talking about CDs here. This statement includes any good resolution downloads or streaming files.

Perception affects enjoyment more than anything else. That’s where a major failure lies. Right now, by any objective standard, we have the best listening formats and equipment ever made, and at prices that are mind-bogglingly affordable.

In reality, modern digital actually sounds amazing. A 320kbps stream from Spotify or MOG among other mediums, sounds indistinguishable from a CD when heard by the ear. Meanwhile, within the spectrum of human hearing, a CD is unquestionably closer to the original master than vinyl is. In terms of raw sound quality, what’s available today is proven to be of higher-fidelity than vinyl, cassette, 8-track, AM/FM radio and just about any other consumer format ever invented.

At this point, we don’t need to convince the engineers to design better digital. They’ve already done their jobs. The technology is there. Now we’ve gotta do our jobs and convince people to start paying for it again!

Yes, great speakers sound sublime. Hanging out with friends, listening to albums and feeding off of each others enthusiasm is awesome. No question. These things can make a huge difference in perceived audio quality. Vinyl on the other hand? Not so much.

It may be counter-intuitive to some vinyl promoters, but pretending that digital can’t sound as good or better than vinyl is a major part of the problem facing musicians and other artists today. Not only is it not true, but it reinforces the backwards notion that today’s recordings just aren’t worth paying for. We would be lying if we said that digital is lousy, where in fact, it is among the best we’ve ever had.

The problem faced by musicians with regard to their income is certainly not going to be solved by singing praises of vinyl. It is going to be solved by developing great streaming services and making sure they’re paid fair rates. It’s going to be solved by reasonable and effective crackdowns on piracy and it’s going to be solved by information campaigns that tell people the truth, inspiring them to put value back into the music that is already available at their fingertips. That is all that can save musicians. There is no way that vinyl can do it alone.

If you want improved sound quality, we’ve got better sound quality today than ever before. If you want convenience and access, that’s there too. If you want low prices, Jesus! are they low (sometimes even free). If you want physical copies, you can get that too.

To conclude, ask yourselves, when was the last time you bought some good music? As a consumer, it doesn’t matter if you’re paying for streams or downloading, buying LPs or CDs. As a consumer, all that matters is that you’re contributing and not just leeching.

So buy your CDs, buy your vinyl. As long as you’re buying, the best things in life like good music are not going to go away, ever!