The Supply Curve

In 2007, the United States sold less than one million vinyl LPs. The format had been declared dead since the late 1980s. Pressing plants had closed. The machinery that stamped grooves into hot polyvinyl chloride had been scrapped or shipped to Eastern Europe. Sony struggled to find engineers who still knew how to operate one. By 2023, Americans bought 49.6 million vinyl records. The format had grown roughly 50-fold from its low. In the same year, for the first time since 1987, vinyl outsold compact discs in unit volume. Music fans had quietly resurrected a physical format that the industry had given up on completely. Pressing plants could not keep up. Independent labels routinely waited eight to 12 months for a single album to be manufactured.