Key Production Group founder Karen Emanuel has projected "steady growth" for vinyl in 2026 and saluted Taylor Swift's impact on the physical music market.
The overall vinyl market was up 10.7% year-on-year in Q3 at 1,498,693 units, according to data from the BPI, while sales for the year to date are up 7.4% at 4,733,937. Top UK sellers include Sam Fender’s People Watching, Wet Leg’s Moisturizer, Pulp’s More and Wolf Alice’s The Clearing.
It was reported earlier this year that Key Production had seen a 50% surge in vinyl orders in 2025, and Emanuel told Music Week she expected the format's upward trajectory to continue next year.
“I think there’s going to be small, steady growth," she said. "I think the vinyl market falsely skyrocketed during and after Covid, so now we’re just readjusting. Would I be worried if it didn’t? I wouldn’t be worried, because one year doesn’t tell the whole story. But everything to me is pointing towards steady growth.”
The Q3 upturn followed a dip in the second quarter when vinyl sales declined by 2.8% year-on-year despite Record Store Day falling within that three-month period. However, those figures prompted Key COO Neil Gibbons to pen an op-ed for Music Week urging the industry to “look beyond the headline figures”.
All the pressing plants are really busy and we’ll see the effect of that in a few months’ time
Karen Emanuel
Speaking in our November issue, Emanel also hit back at murmurings of a vinyl "wobble".
"It was interesting, because those stats came out and we were sitting around going, ‘That’s not happening to us,’" she said. "I mean, I love statistics, but they can be such rubbish and you have to pull them apart to find out the reality. And the reality, at this moment in time, is that all the pressing plants are full and turnaround times are actually getting longer.
"You might have a month where there’s not much coming out and it sinks for a bit, but you’ve got to look at it overall. Certainly, we’ve got loads of great stuff coming out. All the pressing plants are really busy and we’ll see the effect of that in a few months’ time... So I think statistics sometimes have to be looked at in a little bit more depth than just the headlines.”
Upon picking up the 2024 Music Week Women In Music Award for Businesswoman Of The Year last year, Emanuel declared: "Physical is in a very good place, it's here to stay." And the co-founder of the Moving The Needle charity said nothing had happened over the past 12 months to make her doubt that assessment.
"I can see there’s a couple of generations below us that have become fans and collectors and it keeps coming," she said. "At one point, I think it was generally the older generation, but now it is being passed down and we’ve now got two generations below that. We did some interesting research about Gen A, and even they are starting to listen to CDs and vinyl – and their parents are encouraging it because it’s reducing their screen time.”
Look at all the Swifties – from young kids all the way up [to adults] – people want to buy her product because she’s talking about it
Karen Emanuel
Emanuel saluted the impact of superstar artists like Taylor Swift on the physical sector. The vinyl version of Swift's The Life Of A Showgirl sold a staggering 125,592 units in week one, replacing 2024 predecessor The Tortured Poets Department (66,388 sales) as the album which has sold most copies on vinyl in a week in the Kantar (Millward Brown) chart era (1994 onwards).
It also surpasses anything in the era (1983-1994) of previous chart compilers Gallup. According to Alan Jones' albums analysis, you need to go back to 1980 (ABBA’s Super Trouper), or perhaps even The Beatles in the 1960s for a bigger vinyl sales week, although these are based on advance vinyl orders.
“It’s great that artists are talking about how much they love putting their music out on physical formats," said Emanuel. "Look at all the Swifties – from young kids all the way up [to adults] – people want to buy her product because she’s talking about it and that’s great; once someone does it, you look at other artists and want to buy their stuff.
"When an artist is writing an album, they’re writing a story. And when you get into an artist, you want to get inside of their head, as it were. Don’t get me wrong, streaming has its place, it’s great for discovering music and for listening to that one track, but it’s not telling the story as the artist wants to.”
Meanwhile, unit sales for CD were down 11% year-on-year in Q3 – again an improvement on the 22.4% slump in Q2 – while the year-to-date decline is 12.2%. But with The Life Of A Showgirl's first week tally in the UK also including 194,596 CDs (as well as 2,652 cassettes), Emanuel suggested there was still life in the format yet.
“People have been trying to write them off for quite some time, but a lot of catalogue labels still put them out and people are still buying them," she said. "A lot of people have old cars with CD players and love listening to CDs as they drive, and the younger generation like CDs because they’re getting something tangible. And it’s maybe more convenient to buy a CD when you’re at a gig because it’s smaller [and cheaper] than a piece of vinyl.
"Human beings want to collect, they want to touch, they want to feel, they want to hold. There has been a small decline, but it’s just a small decline, it’s not a complete write-off. I’m hoping we’ll see a little uptick, to be honest.”
Subscribers can read the full interview with Karen Emanuel in the October edition of Music Week.
