How Much Do Records Cost? Why Is Vinyl So Expensive?
Ed Lansink
March 24, 2023
On average, new vinyl albums currently cost anywhere between $25 to $50, with EPs usually around $20 and 7” singles $10-15. Although in the second-hand market, vinyl records can cost anywhere from $0.10 to $2m.
Also, with vinyl costing around 5x the price of a digital album, you might be wondering – why are they so expensive?
If you’ve kept up with vinyl prices, you might have also noticed a sharp increase in the past few years. In this guide, I’ll:
Explain why the price of vinyl records is increasing
Break down the extra costs involved with pressing wax
Discuss how much you can expect to spend when hitting your local record store!
How much do vinyl records cost?
Records can cost various prices based on several factors relating to their rarity, version, length, supply, and collectability.
The price of a vinyl record will be much more than the cost of a digital version. That is understandable, given the fact you are receiving something material, and that takes a lot more work to put in place. There is also a limited supply compared to digital, which can be replicated an unlimited number of times for free. Also, there are a limited number of vinyl factories.
There are a few different answers to this question, and when comparing standard new releases to second-hand/used records, there can be a huge amount of variation. There is also a lot of variation when looking at different vinyl formats (LPs, EPs, and singles.)
First, let’s talk about new releases and popular repressings…
If an artist releases a new album on vinyl, the average price is usually around $40. This would be around 12 tracks and pressed in runs of anything from 300 to 100,000+ based. This price point is the same for any re-pressings of popular albums from recent history. I’m just talking about standard albums (unopened). Here are a couple of examples:
You can see how these all have a reasonably similar price. Note that some of the above are 180-gram vinyl repressings, which are slightly more expensive anyway.
Many so-called hype stickers try to increase perceived value to justify the higher cost of a record.
What about the price of ‘indie’ and smaller vinyl releases?
It’s also worth talking about obscure music and smaller-scale pressings. Smaller indie artists might only release vinyl in a run of 300 as they don’t want to print more vinyl records than they can sell.
I often find these ‘boutique’ records are pricier than standard records. This is partly because the cost per unit is higher in smaller runs. (Record plants give bulk discounts for large runs).
I also know smaller artists/bands who have sold vinyl basically at a loss (lower than the actual cost they paid) or at cost price – to encourage people to buy them. These people just want to make enough money to cover the production costs and don’t bump up prices for profit, which scares customers away – but it ultimately depends on the artist’s motivation in the vinyl industry.
How much do second-hand vinyl records cost?
When discussing old and second-hand records, prices can be completely different.
They often sell for much more than when they were first pressed, although they can sell for a fraction of their original price. Many second-hand records sell dirt cheap, often for less than a dollar (although don’t expect anything in mint condition at that price!)
Collectors are also willing to pay more for rare records, first pressings, and limited editions – provided the quality is still good. Prices vary hugely here, with some rare records costing $100, whilst super collectible pressings can go for $10,000+.
More factors can affect the price of second-hand records than new ones- mostly quality, rarity, and provenance.
The quality largely dictates the price of second-hand vinyl records. If an album is in good condition, it generally retains its value or even increases. However, if records are damaged (like a scratched or warped record), we lose value. It’s a sliding scale.
Here are some general multipliers for second-hand vinyl based on quality, although other factors can have a further influence on the price of a vinyl record.
Good and above (anything close to new, not too much damage) = 0.8x to 2x, depending on rarity and quality.
g 2nd Hand Album (not particularly rare) – $10 – $100
Less than good (anywhere from OK, to trashed) = 0.8x to 0.1x
g $0.10 – $15 for an album.
The ranges are quite large, so this is only a general estimate. You can find records all over the price scale based on quality and rarity. Again, check my guide on vinyl record grading for more details.
Why is vinyl so expensive?
If you’re a music lover like me, who also loves to buy records, then you probably know that these magnificent black discs aren’t always cheap.
Like most products, the cost of vinyl records has been steadily increasing over the years.
This wasn’t also the case, though: Just a decade ago, vinyl records used to be a lot less costly than they are now.
Really there are two parts to this question, and the answers are interlinked:
First, why is vinyl generally expensive (compared to digital and CD)?
Secondly, why do vinyl prices keep going up?
I’ll separate these answers out later, but there is a common thread – it’s supply and demand. Vinyl records have a limited supply, naturally have a higher production cost and demand for vinyl has increased sharply.
The reasons why vinyl is costly in the first place:
Production costs
Materials (the PVC itself)
Sleeves (materials and printing)
Additional Mastering Time (vinyl needs more production work)
Factory costs / the manufacturing process
Machines in record plants
Labor (pressing engineers, packaging, shipping)
Distribution Costs
Vinyl records are heavy objects, so factor in fuel prices to move them around.
They take up space, so there is an element of storage costs somewhere.
Limited Pressing Plants – Capacity was lost with the decline of vinyl, and plants are now struggling to cope with the increased demand.
All of the above factors contribute to vinyl being more costly than other formats, mainly digital. Many of these factors are also part of the reason why prices are still increasing, as all of the underlying costs are increasing too.
Despite companies like Vinyl Me Please and Mobile Fidelity opening new factories and appeals from music industry giants like Jack White, there is still limited production capacity.
What contributes to the increasing prices of vinyl?
Due to a supply and demand mismatch, vinyl records have garnered high prices since their popularity began to surge in 2007.
It was reported that nearly 42 million sales of vinyl records occurred between 2019 and 2021, an increase of 121% compared to the previous year’s vinyl sales.
This increase in demand, with even lower supply, has spurred price increases over the last decade. Several evolving economic factors are affecting this.
Graph showing recorded music sales in the US between 1973 and 2021. Vinyl is shown in dark blue. Source: RIAA.
The most important economic principle to understand is that the more demand there is for a product, the higher its price is. Supply limitations push prices higher.
When there is less demand for an item in the market, there is less competition for the suppliers. This is comparable to when a product stays on the market for a lengthy period, and sales are low. As a result, producers and manufacturers may offer their products at deeply discounted prices to artificially increase demand.
If supply decreases (e.g., production becomes more expensive) and the demand increases (e.g., everyone starts buying records again), this results in a shift in price.
Vinyl skyrocketed with higher prices as a result of this supply-demand imbalance.
As we’ve seen an increase in the popularity (thus demand) of vinyl in recent years, what factors have contributed to its price?
Expertise
Pressing records is not an easy process, and learning and mastering the technique takes years of dedication. As vinyl became less popular, it created a scarcity of engineers and vinyl manufacturers, which is now not enough to meet the demands.
Only 116 vinyl record pressing factories exist worldwide, and of them, only a few have the capacity for mass manufacturing. This places a severe limitation on the number of new vinyl records that can be made.
Labor Costs
The cost of labor is rising all around the globe for several reasons. To press records, the vinyl business depends on highly-trained professionals. The cost of labor rises as these individuals become rarer and have a diminishing supply and increasing demand.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, many personnel who were in charge of the production process were unable to show up, creating a labor shortage. This resulted in a scarcity of workers. Due to the early retirement of many elderly technicians, manufacturing reopened with fewer people available to operate the equipment.
Fewer workers in the supply chain create issues all over the place. This all adds an extra cost for record labels looking to create vinyl records. It also needs more workers from start to finish compared to making CDs and digital.
Material Costs
Material costs have also risen as a result of a shortage of workers and an increase in demand for these raw materials, as was previously indicated.
More materials are needed to produce colored vinyl, which raises the product’s price even more. As a byproduct of inflation, the increase in raw material prices also increases record prices.
Audiophile vinyl records were already expensive before inflation hit and are increasing in price.
Production Times
Creating a vinyl record is a long process due to the need for physical manufacturing for each individual disc.
The pressing process for a single record takes around 30 seconds, which may not seem like much, but consider this: A single pressing machine can make two vinyl records a minute, or 120 in an hour.
Almost 42 million vinyl records were released last year, which (if done on a single machine) would take around 350,000 hours. That’s 40 years! So the queues for record production can be long, and if there is a backlog, then it delays the whole process even more.
Broader economic movements have also impacted the price of vinyl. The recent period of inflation (20% in the last 5 years) has devalued the purchasing power of currencies, meaning you get less vinyl per dollar. For example, a record that would have cost $10 in 2017 would cost $12 today.
The role of the internet in the cost of vinyl records
The internet has made many things easier, but it has also led to a change in the price of vinyl records, and it’s also had an effect on vinyl record stores.
Thanks to the internet, the joy of vinyl has been spread to a wider audience. The vinyl subreddit has roughly a million members. So the vinyl revival has partially been provoked by the internet, making vinyl purchases easier.
Websites like Discogs also make the market more visible, so it’s easier for people to see which vinyl records are selling more and how much people are willing to pay for them. It’s also easier for people to set up vinyl record shops, which have an extra layer of convenience over physical stores.
