Discogs has released its mid-year report for 2020 — and it offers an interesting insight into how music listeners consumption habits have changed amid the pandemic.
The online marketplace for physical music sales (which feels like an oxymoron) has surged dramatically. Sales for vinyl, cassette, CDS and digital downloads all saw a drastic increase during the lockdown period.
According to the report, overall physical music sales on the Discogs Marketplace rose 29.69 per cent – 4,228,270 orders – between January and June this year, when compared to the same period last year.
The report illuminates that the spike began from around April, around the time the coronavirus pandemic forced us all into lockdown.
The most glaring surge came with vinyl, which saw an increase in sales by 33.72 per cent with over 5.8 million units sold. Surprisingly, CDs saw a 31.03 per cent increase (1.6 million units sold), whilst cassettes saw a 30.52 per cent growth (over 137,000 units).
The report has also delved into the best-selling records of the year. Taking home the crown in Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush. Other top sellers include Thundercat’s It Is What It Is, The Strokes’ The New Abnormal, Ozzy Osbourne’s Ordinary Man, Khruangbin and Leon Bridges Texas Sun, and Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene.
“As sellers onboard more stock to the Marketplace, buyers turn to e-commerce with a desire to support small business, and music fans dig further into their own collections, visibility and availability are greater than ever,” the report states. “This trend should continue to grow as new customers become part of the Discogs Community and buying habits shift for the long term.”
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Ultimately, over 7.6million pieces of physical music were sold by independent sellers globally in the first six months of the year, marking an impressive 33.83 per cent increase over the same period last year.
Last week, the first instalment of the three-part, coronavirus iteration of Record Store Day took place. The next instalments will take place on last Saturday in September and October.
