It's a numbers game... And vinyl is on your side.

You're at the start of your career, and you want to build a fanbase and earn an income from your music. Money's tight. You're not signed to a major label. You may not be signed to anybody at all.

Maybe your music has had good traction locally, with friends and locals showing an interest in what you do. Maybe you've done a few shows and they've gone down well. You've painstakingly recorded an album, and you're ready to put it out. Streaming is obviously the answer right? You're not big enough to do physical, it's not worth it...

But wait. Let's do some napkin calculations.

If you have 100 fans and each one of those people is attentive enough to give you 250 streams, that results in a total of 25,000 streams. Looks big for an independent artist early on. Sadly, that only earns you about £96 (at the time of writing). Also, even if you did an 8 song album, each fan would have to listen to every song 31 times to reach that number. I don't think I listened to my favourite album 31 times last year.

Instead, take those same 100 fans. Maybe they've already shown you that they'll pay money to see you play live a few times. Sell them a 12" vinyl record for £25. It's exclusive merch. It's a luxury piece. If you ever make it big, it's a collector's item. If you sell one record to each of your 100 fans, you just pulled in £2500. Minus the, ballpark, £1500 it cost to press 100 12" records, you've just made a profit of £1000.

A grand.

In order to make the same money from streams you'd need to take that 25,000 and multiply it by 10. Your 100 fans would have to each listen to your album 310 times.

Approximately 250,000 streams is what it takes to earn the same as selling 100 records.

It is a lot easier to get 100 people to buy an album once than it is to get them to stream it in its entirety 310 times. People lose focus, and go back to old favourites. Whatever's at the top of my Spotify search history is what goes on, and the algorithm does the rest. And I work in the music business!

But, the clear blue vinyl record I bought direct from a San Diego hardcore band has stayed in my mind, and on rotation, because it's a nice piece, and I see it in my room. It made me remember them -instead of them fading into the distant murky waters in my mind of every live band I've ever done sound for.

The statistics support the move, too. In 2025, vinyl sales surpassed $1 billion for the first time this century according to the RIAA. Trends are showing that younger listeners are reverting to more niche and collector-focused ways of enjoying music. Gen Z are buying old iPod nanos to curate playlists, and may carry several for different vibes. Online music producers who've never done a show in real life are selling out cassettes -it's not even dependent on a physical audience!

But, most importantly for us, the kids are buying records again.

So, if you've got a good thing going locally and want to earn some money from your music without relying on going viral in the algorithm or fighting people's attention spans, get in touch or get a same day custom quote from ourselves at Sonic Wax Pressing. We do short runs of as little as 100 records. Could be the move.