How many vinyl records are sold worldwide each year?

How to get close to this number

Estimate from buyers. Vinyl is bought by a committed minority who purchase several records a year, not by the general music audience. A few million buyers times a handful of records each gives tens of millions, which is the right scale for a niche physical format.

The growth is the genuinely surprising part: up from under three million in 2006, a factor of well over fifteen in under two decades. A format that was obsolete twice over — replaced by CD, then by digital — became the only growing physical medium in music, which almost no technology manages.

The reason is that vinyl stopped competing on convenience and started competing on being an object. Streaming won the listening; vinyl sells ownership, artwork and ritual, which streaming cannot supply. Formats survive obsolescence by finding a function the replacement does not perform, and this is the clearest case in consumer media.