2022 and 2023 in numbers
Another year has passed and it’s once again time to take a look back at what was and take a sneak peek into the future. COVID-19 still ran with the headlines in 2022, and while it does look like the worst of the disease itself is now over we’ll still be feeling its effect on society for a long while – alongside all the other stuff that’s been delaying the record industry. If you’re wondering my reddit post from last year summing up a lot of the causes of delays is still largely relevant.
So of course we had a ton of titles from 2021 pushed to 2022 meaning a lot of titles announced in 2022 aren’t coming out until 2023. Surely this means that things are slowing down a little, right? No… Not at all. Deep breaths. 2022 saw a whopping 288 new releases (although this number does include releases that were released as both a selection and as a full box set, so keep that in mind). In comparison, last year saw 222 new titles, so it’s quite a jump!
I’ve listed 173 upcoming titles for 2023 and beyond in my list of upcoming releases. That’s the first time ever that this number is less than the year before where it was 189. But even if it looks like things are slowing down it’s not by a whole lot.
The labels
Laced had another record year releasing 31 (!) new titles. That’s an all-time record for a label. In addition to that they’ve got 10 releases already announced for this year.
Black Screen Records put out 16 new records, which is a new high for them and they’re keeping their cards close for the new year as we only know of 2 upcoming titles.
Ship To Shore PhonoCo. also had a productive year with 15 video game soundtrack releases this year and another 8 already announced for next year – including two from their new Sunsoft partnership. iam8bit also managed to release 15 new titles – including the highly anticipated Persona box set, which as of right now is the biggest VGM vinyl box set out there (but rumors say that it will be challenged for this record this year). Never a company to be shy of preorders they have a massive 25 VGM vinyl titles announced for 2023 and beyond.
While Limited Run Games may have had their share of controversy it hasn’t stopped them from releases 14 new titles this year with an additional 9 slated for 2023.
Fangamer also put out 9 new releases and as always they rarely announce things ahead of time and they’ve only (sneakily) confirmed 1 upcoming title.
That just scratches (a big part) of the surface for 2022, because we of course saw releases from several other labels – and many of those have also announced multiple titles for 2023. There’s always something to look forward to!
Blip Blop in numbers
I’ve now been running Blip Blop for 7 years and – for personal reasons – there hasn’t been any major happenings outside of the usual (although I did get to do a giveaway with Wired Productions this year!).
In 2021 I crossed 800 news posts and for 2022 I hit the big 1000. That means that I can now confidently say that over 1000 titles have been announced on Blip Blop during the past 7 years!
There’s currently 2506 releases listed on the site, which is an increase in almost 20% over the past year. And that’s not including the massive backlog of different reissues and color variants that are sadly (still…) missing.
In terms of visitors to the site it’s still going up. The past year have had over 55.000 unique users visit the site. 46% of those have come from the US, 9% from the UK, 6% from Canada, and for the first time almost 4% from Japan, France and Germany each. And unsurprisingly most of you came for the Elden Ring box set announcement.
The annual Best of-podcast episode have been postponed a little this year, but the vote should be going out soon, so you have that to look forward to. It may come a little later, but at least this means you’ll be able to vote for every single title that came out in 2022!
This year have been intense for VGM vinyl. Personally I’ve had to really let go of my “gotta catch ’em all” approach as there’s just been too many new releases to catch up. New releases have been dropping all the time and announcements have come left and right and usually several times a week. When I started the site back in 2015 I had never imagined VGM taking off like it has now.
For myself and the site I’ve got a few giveaways planned (one scheduled to go live this month) and I’m involved in a really neat project that should also be announced before too long, so please look forward to that.
Congrats! Not only have you entered the new year, but you’ve also finished reading this wall of text. Thank you for reading and following Blip Blip – it means a lot. Happy new year and here’s to another great year of VGM vinyl!