Vinyl records have taken over – and are becoming more popular than streaming

Retro-obsessed Gen Zers have revived a relic of the last century: vinyl records.

Vintage albums have boomed in popularity in recent years as younger generations flock to buy vinyl from fan-favorite artists like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Billie Artist Hawk records of their latest hits.

Former Spotify economist Will Page predicts that record companies will make $1 billion by the end of the year from vinyl sales alone. Globally, old-school music is expected to overtake CDs, he wrote in a recent report.

In fact, The Economist reported that vinyl outperformed streaming, with records up 15.4% and streaming just 10.4%.

“Like the boy who cried wolf, we’ve been told over and over again that the resurgence of vinyl is a fluke, not a trend,” Page wrote in a column for Billboard earlier this year. “Yet for 18 years in a row, it has continued to exceed expectations.”

Swift first broke vinyl sales records in April with the release of “Department of Tortured Poets,” selling 700,000 copies in just three days. And, just last week, the pop star released “Department of Tortured Poets: The Anthology” on vinyl as a Target exclusive, selling out in some brick-and-mortar locations and already selling for double the price on resale sites like eBay.

Last year, the hitmaker’s albums accounted for 7% of all vinyl sales, more than 3.4 million records in 2023 alone.

Despite streaming services offering more music for less money, discs — sold for anywhere between $30 and $60 for mainstream artists — are akin to “commodities,” Page explained.

Despite the backlash about how “useless” physical LPs are, the record revival comes at a time when Gen Z is returning to older technology, from digital point-and-shoot cameras to telephones and landlines.

The younger generation has even started collecting cassette tapes, admiring the “nostalgic” sound of the audio, despite the difficulties in using the playback devices.

“It seems to me that the tapes have somehow been forgotten. But when they were obscure enough to be unknown to the younger generation, they became kind of cool,” tape collector Zoël Labelle, 23, previously told The Post.

“Being my age, I see a lot of people, a lot of kids who are fascinated by things that are old, like old cameras, t-shirts, comic books.”