Independent record shops expected to take in £10 million on Record Store Day 2024

A new survey from Ditto predicts that Record Store Day 2024 will see independent music retailers will take in £10 million over this weekend alone.

Despite Record Store Day being around the corner, independent artists claim production costs are “still too high” to justify releasing physical music.

Ditto has also reported that in a survey of 1000 independent artists, only 12.8% of those are releasing vinyl despite physical releases rising in sales.

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This same survey found that 54.4% blamed production costs being too high as the reason they don’t release vinyl.

28.7% of artists said their fan base was not interested in vinyl whilst 9.9% claim that production times are too long.

11.1% of independent artists aged between 18-24 release their work on vinyl whilst 34.4% of artists aged 50 and above are likely to release on the format.

It was also found that just 8% of independent rap artists have released music on vinyl while 13.4% of electronic artists have.

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Pop star Taylor Swift has previously reigned the top 100 vinyl with three of her albums in the Official Vinyl Artist Albums Chart 2023 which continues the trend from 2022 which found that one in every 25 vinyl albums sold was a Taylor Swift LP.

Check out more information on Ditto’s survey here.

Becky Buckle is Mixmag's Multimedia Editor, follow her on Twitter