Taylor Swift Powers a $1B Vinyl Boom

Vinyl is having a moment—and Taylor Swift is at the center of it, reports Variety. The US recorded-music business hit a record $11.5 billion in 2025, per the Recording Industry Association of America. That was notably boosted by vinyl revenue that topped $1 billion for the first time since 1983. Vinyl sales rose 7.9% to 46.8 million units, extending a nearly 20-year streak of growth. The vinyl renaissance is powered in part by, as the Guardian puts it, Swift's "canny marketing of the format as a collectible."

Swift's 2025 album Life of a Showgirl moved about 1.6 million vinyl copies, with her Lover (Live From Paris) also landing in the year's top 10, according to Luminate. In total, Swift released Life of a Showgirl in 34 different formats, including CD and cassette; eight of those were vinyl, notes Rolling Stone. Sabrina Carpenter's latest two releases together added roughly 600,000 vinyl units. Streaming still dominates—$9.5 billion in revenue, or 82% of the total—with paid subscriptions alone generating $6.4 billion as the US remains the world's largest market for both streaming and vinyl.