The State Of Discogs 2018

Another year has passed and another set of records have been broken. Our annual year-end report is a deep dive into the numbers, trends, and music sales that made 2018 unique. So put on your favorite $27,000 Prince record, pull up a chair, and dig into the year that was 2018. Here are a few quick tidbits:

  • As the Database becomes more complete, growth in total submissions have slowed, only rising by 0.42% in 2018. Popular genres and formats have showed this slowdown, but more obscure genres and formats have experienced serious growth, such as the Brass & Military genre (+40.46%) and digital format submissions (+14.16%).
  • We continued to see rampant growth in cassette sales for 2018, up 24.08% compared to 2017 and a whopping 54.92% compared to 2016.
  • Unsurprisingly, Pink Floyd topped the list of catalog album sales in 2018 — but surprisingly, the album wasn’t The Dark Side Of The Moon. It was Wish You Were Here.
  • While new album sales featured two legacy acts (Led Zeppelin and David Bowie), current artists made up the bulk of the top 10, with Sleep and Nu Guinea topping the list.

View the Discogs 2018 Year-End Highlights and Analysis Below:

Want the full song and dance? Download the Discogs 2018 Year-End Report. You can also keep up with the rest of the ’ogs and their year-end reports: Filmogs, Bookogs, Comicogs, Posterogs, and Gearogs.


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11 Comments
  • hmthrasher
    Mar 18,2019 at 04:02

    Hello I see gripes and concerns about the bigger chains eating up the smaller shops and as a buyer I will go with the cheaper and larger chains to buy music “But” on the rare Heavy Metal stuff all media I collect is carefully fittered and researched and surprising you can get a lot overseas I am in Ohio so being said to the USA sellers quit trying to gouge customers with high prices and stop trying to make more than fair profits on shipping, I have been on here for a long time and have a massive collection and many items have been bought thru here and EBay which most of the time I can get better prices! I also sell privately and don’t rip anyone on shipping if your going to sell then you know you have to have good supplies unless your like a lot of sellers and use reused vinyl mailers and no slipsheets or protection! That’s a whole statement on its own and that’s why I won’t buy for some of the wanna be sellers if your going to ship something do it right! Our brutal postal services don’t care so you as sellers need to know that vinyl should be sent professionally packaged!!! Anyway I also collect Cassettes and your graph showing and increase is actuall huge due to buying from other sites and distros Cassettes have surpassed vinyl in the past months and still climbing and prices are thru the roof! Soon CD’s will start coming back strong and cassettes will start will start declining due to price gouging! Thanks Keith

  • StuffShuffling
    Feb 27,2019 at 20:40

    What would be the state of Discogs without Collector’s Choice( Now PopMarket) Killing sales for thousands of other sellers, and leading the rat race to the bottom of pricing? Take away Popmarket and give us those numbers. It cannot be good for the industry when they come in and sell records for $10, that no one else can sell for less then $17. That is not a great strategy for discogs in the long game if all your small fish(and brick & mortar users are getting shut out to Sony!

  • magotago
    Feb 25,2019 at 19:01

    Amazing works. Thanks

  • All-Day
    Feb 25,2019 at 17:50

    How much of the sales growth was due to discount retailers like Collectors Choice et al cannibalizing sales from smaller sellers?

  • Kadink
    Feb 24,2019 at 00:11

    It would be nice to see most expensive items separated by format.

  • joedefazio
    Feb 22,2019 at 21:34

    Fascinating history and info. Thanks.

  • retrospinvinyl
    Feb 17,2019 at 21:52

    Very interesting!

  • sixandnine
    Feb 15,2019 at 14:27

    Fascinating!

  • gabberoma
    Feb 15,2019 at 14:06

    GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • hexodns
    Feb 15,2019 at 12:49

    Thank you very much. Very interesting!

  • recordexpress
    Feb 14,2019 at 21:07

    Music memorabilia is the only way to grow now. Great work discogs, amazing report.

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