UK Vinyl Statistics 2026: 18 Years of Growth, £174m Sales

UK vinyl in 2025: a fresh peak

1. £174.4 million in UK vinyl revenue in 2025

British vinyl revenue rose 19.9% year on year to £174.4 million in 2025, according to the BPI. It is the strongest annual growth the format has produced in years and shows that the UK vinyl story is still accelerating, not plateauing.¹

2. The highest UK vinyl revenue in more than thirty years

That £174.4 million total is the biggest the BPI has measured since the early 1990s, when CD was just taking over from vinyl. In real terms the UK vinyl business is back in pre-Britpop territory.²

3. £145.7 million in vinyl revenue in 2024

The BPI’s 2024 full-year report logged £145.7 million in vinyl LP trade revenue, up 2.9% year on year. That was already enough to make vinyl the standout growth story across the entire UK recorded music market.³

UK units sold: a 17- and 18-year run

4. 6.7 million UK vinyl albums sold in 2024

Vinyl album unit sales grew 9.1% to 6.7 million in 2024, the highest annual total in three decades and the 17th consecutive year of growth for the format in the UK.⁴

5. 7.6 million UK vinyl albums sold in 2025

2025 added another 13.3% on top, taking UK vinyl album sales to 7.6 million units. That is an 18th straight year of growth, a streak almost no consumer format anywhere can match.⁵

Vinyl vs CD: the UK crossover

6. Vinyl overtook CD on UK revenue in 2022

Vinyl revenue beat CD revenue in the UK for the first time since 1987, in the BPI’s 2022 trade figures. Britain’s revenue crossover happened a touch ahead of most other big markets and made vinyl the dominant physical format on the high street.⁶

7. Vinyl now makes up about 60% of UK physical revenue

By 2024, vinyl accounted for roughly 60% of all UK physical music revenue. CDs, cassettes and music video make up the remainder, with cassettes still a niche-but-growing collector format.⁷

8. UK CD revenue fell to £96.7 million in 2024

CD trade revenue in the UK slipped just 0.5% to £96.7 million in 2024. The two physical formats have effectively swapped seats over the past five years.⁸

9. Vinyl revenue grew more than 650% in a decade

UK vinyl revenue grew from £19.4 million in 2014 to £145.7 million in 2024, a rise of more than 650% in ten years. Few consumer categories of any kind have grown that fast over a full decade.⁹

What a record actually costs in the UK

10. A new LP usually costs £25 to £35

Standard new black vinyl typically sits between £25 and £35 at HMV, Rough Trade and most independent shops. Coloured pressings, picture discs and Record Store Day editions push that towards £40 to £55, and audiophile reissues frequently start at £40 and climb past £100.¹⁰

Independent record shops: the high-street backbone

11. 461 independent record shops trading in 2023

The ERA Yearbook recorded 461 independent record shops trading in the UK in 2023, a 10-year high, up from just 339 in 2014. Indies now represent around 23% of all music outlets, against just 3% a decade earlier.¹¹

12. Record Store Day 2024 delivered roughly £10 million to indies

RSD 2024 was projected to deliver around £10 million in extra sales to UK indie record shops, with more than 270 stores taking part. It remains one of the single biggest commercial events in the UK indie retail calendar.¹²

13. Record Store Day 2025 set a 30-year UK record

RSD 2025 produced the biggest weekly vinyl album sales total through UK independent shops since at least 1994. Vinyl sales across the whole UK market rose 80% in that week, and indies briefly took 72.1% of all vinyl sales versus a normal share of 34.6%.¹³

The biggest UK vinyl releases

14. Taylor Swift sold 147,000 UK vinyl of The Life of a Showgirl in 2025

Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album was the UK’s biggest-selling vinyl album of 2025 with around 147,000 copies sold on wax. It is the fourth year in a row Swift has held the UK’s number-one vinyl album, after Midnights, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and The Tortured Poets Department.¹⁴

15. 125,000 UK vinyl copies sold in opening week

The Life of a Showgirl moved 125,000 vinyl units in its opening week in the UK, making it the fastest-selling vinyl album in the UK this century by a wide margin.¹⁵

16. Sam Fender sold 43,000 UK vinyl of People Watching in week one

Sam Fender’s People Watching opened with 43,000 UK vinyl sales in early 2025, the biggest opening-week vinyl total for a British artist this century. The album passed 100,000 vinyl sales soon after, a benchmark almost no UK act has hit in the streaming era.¹⁶

17. Sabrina Carpenter sold 46,000 UK vinyl of Man’s Best Friend in 2025

Sabrina Carpenter put two albums in the UK year-end vinyl top ten in 2025, with Man’s Best Friend at fifth on around 46,000 copies and 2024’s Short n’ Sweet still at ninth.¹⁷

18. Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets sold 112,000 UK vinyl in 2024

The Tortured Poets Department was the UK’s biggest-selling vinyl album of 2024 with 112,000 copies on wax, the highest annual vinyl total for any album in the UK this century at the time.¹⁸