The resurgence of vinyl record sales over the past few years has yielded impressive figures across the music industry. With releases this year from Harry Styles, Raye, Gorillaz, and many more, this trend is set to continue throughout 2026. The immense growth in collecting physical media has been a net positive, but some questions remain unanswered. 

Record sales are undeniably a crucial part of how artists make a living, with the annual Record Store Day - taking place this year on Saturday, 18 April - boosting revenue streams for artists and independent stores alike. With the pitiful returns made on streaming services and the ever-increasing fees that live venues take from performers’ merchandise sales, vinyl record sales are becoming a significant portion of income for some of our favourite artists. 

Between alternate vinyl colours, limited-edition album covers, and exclusive tracks, musicians leveraging their commercial power is a frustrating but by no means new phenomenon. The Police were playing this game with their final album, 1983’s hit ‘Synchronicity’. Estimates suggest that The Police produced a whopping 36 different album covers, all featuring variations in colour and photography. The line between pushing the boundaries of artistic exploration and financial exploitation is all too thin.

As a major player in the music industry, Billie Eilish has been perhaps the most vocal in her distaste towards artists exploiting their fans for cash – strongly condemning the practice as “really frustrating” and “wasteful”. Crucially, Eilish acknowledges that if fans are willing to shell out, providing as many variations of the same album is “the only way to play the game” – especially for smaller acts who can’t rely on huge tours to supplement their living.

Amongst the collector world, opinions are split as to the morality of fleecing their fans – especially when it's done by globally renowned musicians who aren’t exactly strapped for cash. Not one of our heroes is innocent. On the release of Taylor Swift’s most recent album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, she presented her adoring fans with no less than eight variations of her newest LP. Supporters of Swift argue nobody is obliged to buy any of her work, never mind all eight copies. On the contrary, dissenting voices stress that artists should be mindful of their audience and the pressure a young demographic may feel to show their allegiance.

Swift is by no means alone in this; Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Man’s Best Friend’ and Ed Sheeran’s ‘X’ both present consumers with a much more modest four vinyl variations. The purists of the world have extensively argued, amongst themselves, over whether experimenting with coloured, clear, or liquid-filled vinyl harms the sound quality more than it fulfils any aesthetic purpose. Perhaps the most egregious of all recent cases was seen on the release of The Rolling Stones’ latest album, ‘Hackney Diamonds’. In all, 43 variations of the same album were available for purchase, covering splatter patterns on the discs, alternate album covers, and individually specialised album designs for all 30 Major League Baseball teams. This level of exploitation fills the pockets of record labels and serves their desires to have the album lingering in the charts as long as it possibly can.

For some, this practice is nothing short of a cash grab, with critics alleging that artists know full well that collectors and super-fans will be parting with vast sums of money to attain every available variation. It also has wider ramifications for smaller artists, who struggle to secure the attention of manufacturers who are already too busy pressing the same album in multiple colours. Compounding these woes is the fact that, across the board, factories are suffering from a significant backlog in vinyl production, which is largely due to the industry's continued reliance on 1980s technology to supply a 2020s market. 

Vinyl records don’t exactly have a squeaky-clean environmental outlook, as their PVC composition makes them extremely difficult to recycle. The plastics used in pressing records can be toxic, and the by-product of this process, vinyl chloride monomer, produces fumes that can be deadly for humans. While the environmental impacts of data storage for streaming services are similarly harmful, the music industry sidesteps these concerns by distracting us with a nostalgia-fuelled ‘exclusive vinyl splatter’ box set of your favourite band’s greatest hits.

If fans buy two or three versions of the same album after succumbing to the allure of alternate covers, vinyl colours, or album-exclusive songs, its success on the charts can be supercharged. It’s for this reason that we often see deluxe albums being released – anything new from an artist keeps us, as fans, engaged and contributing to their success.

There are compelling arguments from both those who see multiple vinyl variants as light-hearted fun and those who see it as a capitalistic blight on the sanctity of music as an art form. Ultimately, we are free to buy (or not buy) as many albums as we want in our search for the ‘complete’ record collection, and the odd special album brightens up the turntable no end. That being said, if anyone pulls the same stunt as The Rolling Stones, they might just feel the backlash.  

 Joseph Madden

 @josephmaddenwriter

Image: Official ‘The Life of a Showgirl "A Look Behind The Curtain"’ Album Cover