Discogs Analysis Shows Continued Vinyl, Cassette Growth

Discogs has released their 2018 Mid-Year Marketplace Analysis & Database Highlights. The report emphasizes physical musical sales for both catalog and new releases, comparing them to broader industry stats from Neilson.

The Discogs Mid-Year Marketplace Analysis compares data from the Nielsen Music Mid-Year Report offering a unique comparison of Nielson's B2C and online music marketplace Discogs' data, which includes C2C re-sales.

Mid-Year Highlights:

• Nielsen Music is reporting that physical album sales are down again for 2018 (-14.6%), while Discogs’ Marketplace sales are up, with a 10.2% increase in orders and 15.8% increase in revenue.
• The most popular format sold so far in 2018 has been vinyl, with an increase in sales orders year-over-year (+14.97%). However, cassettes have seen the most growth in sales orders (+35.19%).
• Vinyl and CD submissions to the Discogs Database have both decreased slightly (-3.13% and -1.47%, respectively), while cassettes and other formats (a combination of digital releases and physical media) have increased (+8.96% and +4.50%, respectively) for a net increase in submissions (+12.32%).
• The most popular genres sold in the Discogs Marketplace are Rock, Electronic, and Funk/Soul. However, both the Classical (+37.82%) and Latin (+35.07%) genres have seen a sizable year-over-year increase in sales.

Download the full report.