Photo Credit: Taylor Swift (TAS Rights Management)
Taylor Swift led the charge this year as sales of vinyl LPs increased for the 18th consecutive year, with growth across all physical formats in 2025.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) released its annual report this week, revealing that Taylor Swift fans’ hunger for vinyl contributed to another marked boom year for physical formats in 2025.
While vinyl still makes up a relatively small portion of total music consumption (7.6 million albums compared with 189 million “streaming equivalent albums”), record sales grew by 13.3% in 2025. That’s the 18th consecutive year of growth, and streets ahead of the 5.5% increase notched by streaming.
Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl sold 147,000 vinyl units—the most sold by anyone since the Official Charts Company began compiling that data in the 1990s. It’s also the fourth successive year in which Swift was the top annual vinyl seller, with Midnights in 2022, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in 2023, and The Tortured Poets Department in 2024.
Six of the top 10 biggest-selling vinyl albums of 2025 were released in the last two years, led by The Life of a Showgirl. Swift also claimed a second entry in the Top 10 with Lover (Live From Paris) at #4, while Oasis ((What’s the Story) Morning Glory and Definitely Maybe), and Sabrina Carpenter (Man’s Best Friend and Short N’ Sweet) each had two albums on the list.
Rounding out the Top 10 were releases from Fontaines DC (Romance), Olivia Dean (The Art of Loving), and Sam Fender (People Watching), alongside the evergreen classic, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which has been among the Top 10 vinyl sellers for the last decade.
Meanwhile, CD sales declined by 7.6% to 9.7 million, indicating that the format’s so-called resurgence may have been overestimated. Taylor Swift’s Showgirl was the top CD album this year with around 227,000 units sold. It’s the highest yearly total achieved by an album on the format since Adele’s 30 in 2021. The album was also joined in the CD Top 10 by Swift’s 2024 release, The Tortured Poets Department.
However, an expanded interest in cassette tapes led to nearly 80% growth in the “Other” category, though it still only clocked a relatively dismal 330,000 units. Astoundingly, after 19 years of decline, album sales across all physical formats grew for a consecutive year in 2025, maintaining last year’s 1.4% growth to clock in at 17.6 million units.
