In 2025, US vinyl sales passed one billion dollars in annual revenue for the first time since 1983, selling 46.8 million units against 29.5 million for CDs. Put differently: the format your grandparents used to buy the Beatles has, for the nineteenth consecutive year, grown in the market share that was supposed to belong to streaming. How this happened, and why the curve has steepened rather than flattened, is a story that the music industry is still slightly uncomfortable admitting it did not predict.
The numbers, in context
The RIAA’s 2025 annual report, released in March, logged total US recorded music revenue at 11.5 billion dollars, an all-time high. Streaming accounts for roughly 84 percent of that, which surprises nobody. What surprises observers is what happened to the physical 16 percent. Vinyl grew 9.3 percent year on year. CDs fell 7.8 percent. Digital downloads, the format streaming was supposed to have replaced already, slipped another 0.8 percent.
The gap between vinyl and CDs in 2025 was not narrow: vinyl produced more than three times the revenue of CDs on the year. The trend held in the 2025 mid-year report as well, and early 2026 sales data from independent retailers point toward a twentieth consecutive year of vinyl growth.
Italy’s numbers track the American curve at a small delay. FIMI, the Italian industry body, reported vinyl sales up approximately 12 percent in 2025 over 2024, concentrated in the 25-to-45 age band and weighted heavily toward catalogue reissues — Pink Floyd, Lucio Battisti, Fabrizio De André, Pino Daniele — rather than new releases.
Who is actually buying
The stereotype of the vinyl buyer as a fifty-something man in a leather jacket at a specialist shop is decades out of date. The current buyer base, documented in a 2024 Goldman Sachs music-industry note and corroborated by independent retailers across Europe, is significantly younger and significantly more female than the stereotype assumes. Taylor Swift’s catalogue drove a remarkable share of US vinyl growth through 2023 and 2024; the 2024 Eras Tour vinyl alone moved over two million units across its variants.
A representative Italian independent record shop — I spoke to the owner of Serendeepity in Milan and Rive Gauche in Turin for this piece — sees a weekly customer base split roughly evenly between men and women, skewed toward the 20-to-35 age bracket, with genre preferences heavy on indie rock, jazz reissues, and, somewhat unexpectedly, soundtrack vinyl. The Stranger Things and Twin Peaks soundtracks sell continuously; a Ennio Morricone reissue can move thirty copies in a weekend.
The customer who most reliably does not exist is the purist who spends 4,000 euros on a turntable. That person is real, but rare. The bulk of the market is someone who bought an Audio-Technica AT-LP60 or a Pro-Ject T1 for around 250 euros, owns between 30 and 120 records, and rotates listening between vinyl and Spotify depending on time of day. The two formats coexist in practice without the conflict the industry press keeps projecting onto them.
What the format actually offers
The audiophile argument — that vinyl sounds better than digital — is technically incorrect, commercially irrelevant, and largely beside the point of why the format is growing. Well-mastered digital audio preserves more frequency detail, more dynamic range, and cleaner imaging than vinyl does. The engineers who cut the vinyl masters say so themselves, off the record.
What vinyl offers instead is three things that streaming cannot provide. First, a physical object with artwork at a size that rewards attention — a 30 by 30 centimetre sleeve is a design medium in a way that a 3 by 3 centimetre thumbnail on a phone is not. Second, a forced sequence: the first side of Kind of Blue plays for twenty-one minutes, you stand up, you turn it over, and for that minute between sides there is a small ritual that streaming has compressed out of existence. Third, ownership. A vinyl record is yours, and remains yours, in a way that a streaming library is not: the catalogue you paid for on Spotify in 2016 is not the catalogue you have access to today, because licensing deals expire and albums vanish.
That third point matters more than it sounds. A generation of listeners who grew up watching songs, albums, and entire artist discographies disappear from streaming services overnight — most recently the Neil Young removal episode, but it happens in small ways every week — have responded by buying physical copies of the music they actually care about. The industry’s metadata for this is “ownership anxiety,” and it is measurable.
The manufacturing bottleneck, and why it is not solved
Pressing vinyl is hard. The industry lost most of its manufacturing capacity in the 1990s when CDs displaced LPs. Rebuilding it has been slow, expensive, and complicated by the fact that the machinery is mostly half a century old. A typical vinyl pressing plant in 2026 runs equipment originally installed between 1968 and 1982, maintained by a small pool of technicians whose expertise is irreplaceable when they retire.
The consequence is that demand consistently exceeds supply. An independent Italian band pressing its first LP in 2026 books a run at GZ Media in Czechia, Record Industry in the Netherlands, or Phono Press in Emilia-Romagna, and waits fourteen to twenty weeks for delivery. For major-label releases the wait is shorter because the pressing plants prioritise guaranteed volume. This matters because it structurally limits how much the format can grow: you cannot ship what you cannot press.
New pressing plants are coming online. Third Man Records opened a plant in Detroit in 2017, a Polish plant opened in 2021, and a new Spanish facility began operations in Valencia in 2024. The Italian supply chain still relies primarily on Czech and Dutch capacity, though Phono Press expanded in 2024 and a small Rimini-based operation began limited production in 2025. The capacity is growing at roughly 5 to 7 percent a year; demand has grown faster in every year of this decade.
Price pressure
The average price of a new vinyl LP in 2026 is around 32 euros in Italy for a single-disc release and 45 to 55 euros for a double. Adjusted for inflation, these prices are approximately 20 percent higher than they were in 2019, a period in which streaming subscription costs grew modestly and CD prices fell. The RIAA reports that the average US price of a mint vinyl record grew 24 percent between 2020 and 2025, to around 37 dollars.
The price increase has two drivers. The cost of PVC, the raw material for records, doubled between 2020 and 2022 and has only partly receded. And the structural scarcity of pressing capacity lets plants pass costs through aggressively. Independent artists complain that their margin on vinyl is narrower than it was five years ago, even though the format commands higher retail prices, because the wholesale production cost consumed the difference.
The result is an odd market dynamic. Vinyl is growing in unit sales and dollar revenue simultaneously — the industry’s favourite combination — while becoming less affordable for both the listener and the artist. Discogs, the second-hand market, has absorbed much of the secondary trade; the average used LP price on the platform in Italy rose 18 percent between 2022 and 2025. For young buyers priced out of new vinyl, Discogs and in-person record fairs are now the default purchase channels.
Why digital natives keep buying vinyl
The generational breakdown of the vinyl revival is the single most counterintuitive finding in the RIAA’s reporting. A 2024 Luminate study of US music consumers, cross-referenced with the 2024 IFPI Engaging with Music global report, found that 50 percent of vinyl buyers under 25 do not own a turntable at the time of purchase. Among Gen Z consumers (born 1997 to 2012), weekly vinyl purchase intent rose from 11 percent in 2021 to 19 percent in 2024, a figure higher than the millennial cohort in the same period. The buyers genuinely younger than the format, in other words, have become the engine of its growth.
The trade press explanation — that Gen Z is romancing analogue as a reaction against screen fatigue — captures some of the truth but not the economics. The primary driver, according to both the Luminate survey and parallel research from the Italian Music Publishers Association in 2024, is the desire to own a physical artefact of an artist one is a fan of. A 19-year-old who streams Olivia Rodrigo or Taylor Swift on Spotify 400 times a month will pay 42 euros for a coloured-vinyl pressing of the same album not because they will play it through a turntable but because the object itself is evidence of fandom. The record is, functionally, a concert T-shirt with higher production values. Swift alone accounted for 3.5 million vinyl units sold in 2024, the largest single-year vinyl total for any artist since the format’s peak in the early 1980s.
The second driver is tactility. A generation raised on touchscreens and algorithmic feeds describes the ritual of removing a record from its sleeve, placing it on a turntable, and committing to the first side for 21 minutes as qualitatively different from any streaming experience — not necessarily better on a pure audio basis, but engaging a different kind of attention. Psychologists writing on the topic (most notably Adrian North at Curtin University, whose 2023 research on nostalgia and consumption has circulated widely) describe this as a preference for what sociologists call “reverse nostalgia”: young listeners adopting the rituals of an era they never experienced, partly as a response to what they perceive as the frictionless thinness of their own media environment.
The third driver is social legibility. A vinyl collection, unlike a streaming library, is visible to visitors; it operates as identity signalling in a way that Spotify Wrapped cannot. The Gen Z vinyl buyer who lives in a shared flat in Bologna or Marseille and has one hundred records on a shelf is broadcasting taste, allegiance, and a certain curatorial care that a Spotify username on a phone screen simply does not convey. The industry takes this seriously because it implies that vinyl’s growth is not primarily an audiophile phenomenon; it is a consumer-identity phenomenon, which responds to different incentives and has a different growth trajectory.
Turntable buying guide, priced for 2026
A first turntable divides neatly into four price tiers in 2026, each of which represents a different set of trade-offs rather than a simple linear improvement. The recommendations below reflect current Italian retail pricing and the machines most frequently recommended by Italian specialist shops (Serendeepity, Rive Gauche, Hi-Fi Club Roma, Audio Acoustica Milano).
Entry tier, 180 to 260 euros — Audio-Technica AT-LP60X. The AT-LP60X is the belt-drive automatic turntable that occupies roughly 40 percent of all first-turntable purchases across Europe. It includes a built-in phono preamp (so it plugs into any powered speaker or amplifier line input), a factory-fitted Audio-Technica moving-magnet cartridge, automatic tonearm return, and a minimal setup procedure that takes about ten minutes out of the box. It is not audiophile equipment. The tracking force is fixed, the tonearm is short and lightweight, and the cartridge is adequate rather than refined. What it delivers is a reliable, worry-free entry into the format at a price that justifies itself within a year of casual listening. If your goal is to enjoy records rather than critique them, and your budget is firm, this is the honest recommendation.
Mid tier, 350 to 480 euros — Pro-Ject Debut Carbon EVO or Audio-Technica AT-LP120X. The Pro-Ject Debut Carbon EVO (around 449 euros in Italy) is the step at which the format begins to sound genuinely good. It has a proper carbon-fibre tonearm, a Sumiko Rainier cartridge fitted at the factory, adjustable tracking force and anti-skate, an acrylic platter in the 2026 revision, and a belt-drive motor isolated from the plinth by TPE damping. The AT-LP120X (around 360 euros) is the direct-drive alternative preferred by listeners who want a more robust machine for frequent cueing or DJ-adjacent use; it includes a built-in phono stage that the Pro-Ject omits. Both are genuine ten-year purchases if maintained. Both reveal the limitations of cheap cartridges, which is why most owners upgrade the stylus within two years.
Upper mid tier, 480 to 750 euros — Rega Planar 1 and Planar 2. The Rega Planar 1 (around 489 euros in Italy, typically bundled with a factory-fitted Rega Carbon cartridge) is the turntable most Italian audio journalists recommend as the sweet-spot buy. It is manual, belt-driven, has no built-in phono stage (so you will budget for one separately), and arrives in a configuration its designer, Roy Gandy, has refined across five decades at Rega’s Essex factory. The Planar 2 adds a better tonearm, a glass platter, and the Rega Carbon MM cartridge for around 649 euros. At this tier, the turntable stops being the limiting factor in the playback chain and the ceiling moves to the cartridge, phono stage, and speakers downstream. Rega’s long-term reliability record is exceptional; Planar 2s from 1990 are routinely still in active daily use in Italian audiophile listening rooms today.
Serious enthusiast tier, 1,000 euros and above — Pro-Ject X2 B, Rega Planar 3 50th Anniversary, Clearaudio Concept. Above one thousand euros, refinements are real but diminishing for most listeners. The Rega Planar 3 50th Anniversary (around 1,050 euros with the Exact cartridge) is arguably the last turntable most enthusiasts ever need to own. The Pro-Ject X2 B and Clearaudio Concept occupy adjacent territory with different ergonomic and aesthetic choices. This is the tier at which the difference between turntables stops being audible on convenience-grade speakers and only reveals itself on serious amplification. If your budget reaches this level on day one, consider holding some of it for a proper phono stage (Rega Fono MM at 225 euros, or the Schiit Mani 2 at 180 euros) and for monitors worth the source.
The single piece of advice that shortens decision paralysis: do not buy the turntable suitcase-style all-in-ones (Crosley, ION, Victrola). Their tracking forces of 5 to 7 grams damage records permanently after 20 to 30 plays, and the sound quality is worse than any Bluetooth speaker. A used Technics SL-1210 MK2 from a Milanese hi-fi broker, at 300 to 450 euros depending on condition, is a better investment than any new all-in-one at any price.
Record Store Day 2026 and Italian pressing plants
Record Store Day 2026 falls on Saturday 18 April, with the Record Store Day Drops event scheduled for 12 July as the usual mid-year top-up. The official list released in February confirmed around 300 RSD exclusives for the UK and European market, including a 50th anniversary picture disc of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, a Peter Gabriel live-in-Rome 1986 double LP previously available only in a deleted box, a remastered Lucio Battisti compilation on red vinyl pressed specifically for the Italian market, and first-time vinyl pressings of a De André radio session from 1979 that had circulated only as bootleg cassettes.
Italian participation in RSD 2026 is organised through the AIE (Associazione Italiana Editori) and VIP, the Italian independent record label body. Roughly 90 Italian record shops are registered as Record Store Day participants in 2026, concentrated in Milan (12 shops), Rome (9), Bologna (7), Turin (6), and Naples (5), with single-shop representation in smaller cities from Palermo to Trieste. The shop with the longest unbroken RSD participation record in Italy is Radiation Records in Rome, which has hosted the event every year since 2011. Queuing at the larger shops begins at 6am; a determined collector at Serendeepity in Milan’s Via Morigi can be eighteenth in line by 7am and still risk missing the single-most-wanted title of the day.
The pressing plants feeding this demand form a small and heavily utilised ecosystem. GZ Media in Loděnice, Czech Republic, is the largest vinyl manufacturer in the world, producing over 70 million records annually across roughly 40 production lines. Most Italian label releases — including major-label titles from Universal Italia, Warner Italy, and Sony Music Italy — are pressed at GZ. The 14 to 20-week lead time Italian independents quote is essentially GZ’s backlog, negotiated through Italian distribution intermediaries. Record Industry in Haarlem, Netherlands, is the second-largest European plant at roughly 20 million units per year, favoured by audiophile labels and independent imprints that want tighter quality control.
Domestic Italian pressing capacity remains small but is genuinely growing. Phono Press, based in Castel Maggiore near Bologna, expanded from four presses to seven in 2024 and now accepts orders from independent Italian labels with lead times around 10 weeks for runs of 300 to 2,000 units. Vinyl Park, operating out of Villorba near Treviso, has positioned itself as the boutique Italian choice for short-run (100 to 500 unit) pressings aimed at self-released indie artists and Bandcamp-direct labels, with 6 to 8-week turnaround. La Fabbrica del Disco in Rimini, the newest of the Italian plants, came online with two presses in late 2024 and grew to four presses by early 2026; they specialise in coloured-vinyl and splatter pressings and have picked up the Italian market for boutique variants that previously had to ship from Prague.
The practical result for a young Italian band pressing its first LP in 2026 is that the choice between “press in Italy at higher unit cost” and “press in Czechia with longer lead times” is no longer as stark as it was five years ago. A 500-unit first run at Phono Press costs roughly 4.20 to 5.10 euros per unit at 2026 prices; the same run at GZ through an Italian distributor costs roughly 3.40 to 4.10 euros per unit with longer queues. For bands releasing on a deadline tied to a tour, the Italian plants have become the default; for bands prioritising per-unit margin, Czechia still wins. The capacity gap is real but narrower every year.
Italian specifics
The Italian vinyl market has two characteristics that distinguish it from the US. First, it leans significantly more toward catalogue than new releases. The best-selling Italian vinyl of any given year is usually a Battisti, De André, Dalla, or Mina reissue; contemporary Italian artists release vinyl, but in smaller runs and at lower velocity. Second, the distribution network is noticeably more local. Chain retailers are weaker than in the US or UK; independent record shops are stronger, particularly in Milan, Bologna, Rome, Turin, and Naples. Transit is a feature, not a bug: a Saturday-morning trip to a record shop is a part of the format’s appeal in a way that clicking “add to cart” is not.
The shops themselves have become cultural infrastructure in a small way. Radiation Records in Rome, Disfunzioni Musicali in the city’s San Lorenzo district, Rive Gauche in Turin, and Serendeepity in Milan all host listening events, in-store performances, and release parties that function as a low-key live-music circuit. The format’s revival has sustained this infrastructure, which would otherwise have been erased by the same forces that closed HMV and FNAC.
The skeptical read
It is worth saying plainly that the vinyl revival has characteristics of a fashion cycle rather than a permanent shift. Sales of the 2024 Dua Lipa release outperformed projections largely because buyers treated the exclusive colour variants as collectible objects, not listening copies — an estimated 30 percent of units pressed for certain pop releases are never played. This is the cassette boomlet of 2017 writ larger, and pop-industry veterans suspect the curve will plateau within three to five years rather than continue compounding.
The counter-evidence is that the buyer base has stopped looking like collectors. Surveys from HMV UK and AIM (Association of Independent Music) in 2024 found that a majority of new vinyl buyers, for the first time, describe themselves as people who actually listen to the records they buy, rather than as investors or ornamental collectors. If that pattern holds, the format has a floor below which it will not fall, and that floor is higher than the industry expected.
For readers considering a first turntable
The entry point in 2026 runs roughly like this. A Audio-Technica AT-LP60X at 200 euros will play records well enough to be worth the experience; it has modest tracking-force control and a built-in phono stage. A Pro-Ject T1 or Rega Planar 1 at 350 to 450 euros is where the format begins to sound genuinely good, with an Ortofon OM5E cartridge that will last about a thousand hours of play. Above that, you are in the world of diminishing returns for most listeners: a 1,200-euro turntable sounds better than a 450-euro one, but the leap from 200 to 450 is larger than from 450 to 1,200.
Budget for a phono preamp if your amplifier does not include one (most modern integrated amps do not). A Rega Fono MM at 200 euros is the standard recommendation. Speakers at this budget tier are a separate problem entirely; the format’s sound quality is capped by the weakest link, and bookshelf speakers under 300 euros become that link quickly.
For readers whose listening overlaps with other musical projects, our history of jazz piece doubles as a buying guide for the first twenty LPs in a starter collection — Kind of Blue, A Love Supreme, Mingus Ah Um — and the running playlist guide offers a practical counterpoint to the sit-still listening that vinyl invites.
Perugia, 10 May 2026.
Sources
- RIAA 2025 annual report
- Hollywood Reporter coverage of vinyl crossing one billion
- Financial Times analysis of the vinyl revival
- La Repubblica music coverage
Sull'Autore
