Animated Chart: The Rise and Fall of Music Sales, by Format (1973-2021)
Connect with us

Culture

Animated Chart: The Rise and Fall of Music Sales, by Format (1973-2021)

Published

on

The Rise and Fall of Music Sales, by Format (1973-2021)

We live in a world of music. Whether when driving to work or jamming out at home, people around the world like to have their favorite tunes playing in the background.

But while our love for music has been constant, the way we consume media has evolved drastically. The past 50 years have seen many different music formats used to access these tunes, mirroring society’s shift from analog to digital.

This video, created by James Eagle using data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), highlights sales of different music formats in the U.S. over the last 50 years.

Vinyl

Up until the late 1980s, vinyl dominated the music format industry, earning billions of dollars in sales annually. Records of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon were some of the top selling albums available.

Vinyl is said to provide its listeners with analog sounds that reverberate and the warm notes of almost-live music. For vinyl users and enthusiasts to this day, the music produced by these sleek yet massive records is unparalleled.

8-Track

If you’re a millennial (or younger), you may have never heard of the 8-track. But this music format played an integral part in the history of music.

When the booming automotive vehicle industry found it challenging to translate the music experience to cars using vinyl, it looked to the “Stereo 8” eight-track cartridge, better known as the 8-track. This cartridge used an analog magnetic tape and provided 90 minutes of continuous music play time.

8-track carved a niche for itself much before the advent of cassettes and CDs. And through the proliferation of vehicles, 8-track sales climbed to reach a peak revenue of $900 million in 1978.

Cassettes

The era of cassettes pushed 8-tracks into the history of music in the early 1980s. These pocket-sized tapes were more convenient to use than 8Tracks and quickly spread worldwide.

By 1989, the cassette format reached its peak revenues of $3.7 billion.

CDs

First released in 1982, the Compact Disc or CD came into the music market as the successor to the vinyl record.

Developed by Philips and Sony, sales of the sleek and portable CD grew quickly as home and car stereos alike added CD functionality. The format brought in $13.3 billion in revenue in both 1999 and 2000. To date, no other music format has reached the same milestone since.

Digital Music Formats

When it comes to preferred music formats over time, convenience (and cost) seem to have been the biggest catalysts of change.

From the start of the early 2000s, CDs had started to be replaced by other forms of digital storage and distribution. The massive shift to internet consumption and the introduction of digital music, available through downloads, pushed audio CD sales down rapidly.

The launch of streaming platforms like Spotify in 2006 exacerbated this decline, with CD sales dropping by around $4 billion in five years.

Digital sales continued to evolve. Ringtone sales alone brought in $1.1 billion in 2007, and in 2012, the revenues from downloads shot up to a peak of $2.9 billion. But music streaming platforms kept climbing through 2021, and will likely continue to be the future face of music consumption.

RankMusic formatsRevenue in 2021
1Streaming$11.5 billion
2Vinyl$1.0 billion
3CD$0.6 billion
4Downloads$0.5 billion
Other$1.4 billion
Total$15.1 billion

Music streaming and subscription services pushed the accessibility of music to new highs, especially with free ad-supported platforms.

In 2021, streaming secured the music industry a whopping $11.5 billion in sales, good for 76% of the total. If it keeps growing in popularity and accessibility, the format could potentially challenge the peak popularity of CDs in the late 90s.

The Vintage Comeback?

There’s no doubt that digital music formats are getting increasingly popular with every passing year. However, one of our vintage and beloved music formats—the vinyl record—seems to be making a comeback.

According to the RIAA database, the revenue earned by LP/EP sales has shot up to $1.0 billion in 2021, its highest total since the mid-1980s.

green check mark icon

This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.

Click for Comments

Misc

Ranked: Largest Communities on Reddit

Subreddit r/funny takes the crown as the largest community on Reddit with 67 million members as of May 2025.

Published

on

A bar chart showing the largest Reddit communities as of May 2025

Biggest Subreddits 2025

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Popular social news aggregation and discussion forum platform Reddit hosts hundreds of thousands of active communities, or subreddits. Which ones have the most members?

This chart ranks the 15 largest communities on Reddit based on number of members as of May 2025.

Data comes from Reddit.

What are the Largest Communities on Reddit?

Below, we show the 15 largest subreddits on Reddit as of May 2025.

RankSubredditMembers (M)
1r/funny67
2r/AskReddit55
3r/gaming47
4r/worldnews46
5r/todayilearned41
6r/Music38
7r/aww38
8r/movies36
9r/memes35
10r/Showerthoughts34
11r/science34
12r/pics33
13r/Jokes30
14r/news30
15r/space28

Subreddit r/funny, created in January 2005, takes the crown as the largest community on Reddit with 67 million members, approximately the population of France.

Humor-related subreddits like r/funny, r/memes, and r/Jokes are some of the most popular communities on Reddit.

General interest, curiosity-driven subreddits are also some of the most popular, including r/AskReddit, r/TodayILearned, and r/ShowerThoughts, while broad-based entertainment communities lik r/gaming, r/Music, r/movies also have significant membership.

Reddit is the sixth-most visited website in the world, totaling 6 billion monthly visits as of November 2024.

It is also among the top websites in the world by daily searches, totaling around 900 million.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

To learn about Reddit’s history, check out this graphic by Chartr that visualizes the rise of Google searches for Reddit.

Continue Reading

Popular