What Nostalgia? Vinyl’s Biggest Boosts Are Coming From Pop Fans and Mass Merchants (Even if Indie Stores and Rock Still Rule)

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIn the longtime parlance of music retail, the vinyl format’s biggest enthusiasts over the years are sometimes known as “crate diggers.” But it might be time to put that image to bed… unless you consider the display racks at Target to be crates, and the young women who are flipping through contemporary releases by Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift to be diggers.Data being collected on an ongoing basis by Luminate (formerly PMC Data and, before that, Nielsen) shows that huge growth for vinyl in the last couple of years has largely been driven by pop superstars and mass merchants — which doesn’t mean that rock ‘n’ roll, indie stores and the traditionalist music geeks who favor them are experiencing any declines at all.

It’s just that generation gaps, genre gaps and point-of-purchase gaps have all but disappeared as vinyl has become the No. 1 way for fans to experience music outside of streaming subscriptions. “Rock still controls the vinyl universe,” concedes Peter Krien, senior music analyst at Luminate.

But with big surges for pop and country of late — not to mention the recent development of Tyler, the Creator’s album returning to No.

1 based almost entirely on a vinyl release — “it was just nice to see some increased diversity from a genre perspective over the past year.”The preeminence of pop in the vinyl format isn’t about to end any time soon.