Most synthwave is digital, and a minority of it is physical. In the Frekvenci archive, 17% of the 23,898 listed releases have a vinyl, cassette or CD edition on file, and 82% are digital only. Of the physical formats, vinyl is the most common (1,918 releases), then CD (1,299) and cassette (1,145). The cassette is the one with a story: it peaked in 2018, with 188 releases, and has fallen to a fraction since.
Before the numbers, a caution about what they measure. The format field comes from MusicBrainz and Discogs, and it records the formats of any edition of a release, not what a record was first sold on. A 2013 album shows as vinyl if it was pressed to vinyl in 2019. A cassette that only exists on a label's Bandcamp page may not be in either database. So treat the counts as a lower bound for tape in particular, and the fall in recent years as partly lag, since physical editions get added to databases after the fact.
Is synthwave mostly digital?
Yes. Of the 23,898 listed releases, 21,012 have a digital edition on file, and 19,612 of those have nothing else. The reasons are practical: the genre grew on Bandcamp, SoundCloud and YouTube, where a release needs no pressing plant, and a very large share of it is self-released. Vaporwave, the biggest family in the archive, is the most extreme case. Of its 10,473 releases, 342 have a tape edition on file and 78 have a vinyl one.
The families differ a lot. Counting releases with a vinyl edition on file:
| Family | Releases | With vinyl | With tape | With CD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synthwave | 8,105 | 1,071 | 506 | 681 |
| Vaporwave | 10,473 | 78 | 342 | 77 |
| Popwave | 2,678 | 431 | 127 | 313 |
| Darksynth | 1,803 | 250 | 110 | 187 |
| Dreamwave | 833 | 88 | 60 | 41 |
Roughly one synthwave release in eight, and one popwave release in six, has a vinyl edition on file. For vaporwave it is below one in a hundred. Vaporwave's physical format is the cassette, not the record: its tape count is more than four times its vinyl count, and it is the only family where that is true. For synthwave the ratio runs the other way, with about two vinyl editions for every tape (1,071 against 506). Vaporwave's culture, from the lo-fi sound to the tape labels, points the same way as the tape count.
Counting any physical edition at all gives a second ranking. Popwave comes first, with 31% of its releases having vinyl, tape, CD or another physical format on file; darksynth follows at 29%, synthwave at 27%, dreamwave at 21%, and vaporwave is far behind at 4%. The song-based, metal-adjacent and pop-leaning ends of the revival are the ones that get pressed. Vaporwave, the biggest family by release count, accounts for only 456 of the 4,139 releases with a physical edition, about one in nine.
When did each format peak?
Here is the year-by-year count of listed releases with each format on file. A release can appear in more than one column.
| Year | Releases | Vinyl | Tape | CD | Any physical |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 232 | 23 | 5 | 37 | 55 |
| 2014 | 706 | 34 | 36 | 46 | 111 |
| 2015 | 1,317 | 70 | 73 | 72 | 202 |
| 2016 | 1,878 | 198 | 128 | 124 | 419 |
| 2017 | 1,925 | 192 | 135 | 144 | 438 |
| 2018 | 2,448 | 211 | 188 | 119 | 487 |
| 2019 | 2,281 | 189 | 142 | 114 | 428 |
| 2020 | 2,597 | 193 | 141 | 128 | 436 |
| 2021 | 2,238 | 178 | 90 | 104 | 361 |
| 2022 | 1,809 | 148 | 53 | 77 | 266 |
| 2023 | 1,746 | 114 | 56 | 56 | 215 |
| 2024 | 1,718 | 100 | 33 | 53 | 180 |
| 2025 | 1,599 | 102 | 21 | 36 | 156 |
Three patterns stand out.
- Among the big years, the physical share peaked in 2016 to 2017. About 22% of listed releases in those years have some physical edition on file, against 15% in 2015 and under 10% in 2025. (The small early years run higher, 47% in 2010 and 24% in 2012, because the few records from then that reached the databases are mostly ones that were pressed.) The number of physical releases has fallen by about two thirds from its 2018 peak of 487.
- The cassette peak is 2018. Tape went from 73 releases in 2015 to 128 in 2016 and 188 in 2018, then held at 141 in 2020 before falling to 90 in 2021, 53 in 2022 and 21 in 2025. By 2025 it is below its 2014 level.
- Vinyl is steadier. It stepped up in 2016 (198, from 70 the year before) and has stayed between 100 and 211 since. From its 2018 high of 211 to 102 in 2025 it has halved, while tape has fallen by almost 90%, so vinyl has held up better.
The 2015 to 2016 step in vinyl is steeper than the music alone would explain, and it may partly reflect better database coverage for those years. This data cannot separate the two.
Early years tell a different story. In 2000 to 2009 the archive is small, and most listed releases are physical: 100% of the 14 releases in 2001 have a physical edition on file, and 61% of the 54 in 2009. The first decade is mostly CDs. The ratio of CD to vinyl in 2005, for example, is 17 to 9, and tape barely exists before 2013. The shift to a digital-first scene happens in 2011 and 2012, when the physical share falls from 36% to 24% and the yearly count of releases more than doubles.
The cassette boom
The wider world saw a tape revival around the same time. A January 2017 report cited a Bandcamp spokesperson saying artists on the service sold 46% more cassettes in 2016 than the year before, and also noted that tape sales were still too small to register on Nielsen's music report.[1] Treble's 2016 piece notes that Cassette Store Day began in 2013 and that cassettes cost less to press than CDs.[2] Both are outside the synthwave world, but the timing matches our peak.
In the archive, tape editions are tied to a handful of independent labels. For listed releases with a tape edition on file, the leaders are Werkstatt Recordings (29), business casual (27), NewRetroWave (27), Stratford Ct. (21) and DMT Tapes FL (14). Bandcamp Daily reported in October 2021 that DMT Tapes reached its 1,000th release in September 2021.[5] The archive lists 1,192 releases for DMT Tapes FL, and only 14 show a tape edition. That suggests many cassettes are simply missing from the databases we read, which is another reason to treat our tape counts as a minimum. Profiles of the two biggest tape names are in DMT Tapes FL and business casual.
One famous tape: Macintosh Plus's Floral Shoppe first came out on cassette in December 2011 through Beer On The Rug, and sold for high prices on Discogs before a pink vinyl edition was announced in 2017.[6] In our data Floral Shoppe shows digital, tape and vinyl editions.
Vinyl and the collectors
Vinyl is where the genre's collectors live. Two of the best-documented cases come from games. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon's score by Power Glove was issued by Invada Records as a neon-pink double LP limited to 1,000 copies for Record Store Day on 19 April 2014.[3] Hotline Miami's soundtrack got a limited vinyl edition of 5,000 copies from Laced Records in 2016, funded by a Kickstarter that raised more than $75,000, according to Wikipedia, which in turn cites an Engadget report of March 2016.[4] These numbers are for the games' soundtracks, not for synthwave in general, but they show what a game can do for a niche format. Trials of the Blood Dragon (Original Game Soundtrack) is in the archive with digital, tape, vinyl and CD editions on file.
Vinyl is also the format where the label list stops looking like the rest of this guide. The leaders by listed releases with vinyl on file are NewRetroWave (33), Stratford Ct. (21), Oráculo Records (18), Hertz-Schrittmacher (18), Minimalkombinat (17) and Polytechnic Youth (16). Several are labels for darkwave, ambient, minimal synth and library-style music whose releases also carry our synthwave-family tags. Two have vinyl on file for their entire listed catalogue (Hertz-Schrittmacher, 18 of 18, and Electronic Purification Records, 13 of 13), and Minimalkombinat is close at 17 of 21. They press records; they are not synthwave labels in the strict sense. That is a good example of why our tags are the community's, not our verdict.
For the heavier side, the metal-rooted Blood Music is the clearest vinyl story. Bandcamp Daily reports that its founder started with reissues and lavish vinyl box sets for metal acts, and ran the label almost entirely alone for most of its life.[7] The Blood Music profile has the catalogue. Its catalogue in our data includes Dangerous Days and The Uncanny Valley, both with vinyl, CD, tape and digital editions on file.
CD's quiet survival
The compact disc is the format nobody writes about. 1,299 listed releases have a CD edition, 5.4% of the archive. The count peaked in 2017 at 144 and has fallen to 36 in 2025. CD is stronger than tape for darksynth (187 against 110) and for popwave (313 against 127), so it is the quieter format of the genre's more song-based and metal-adjacent end.
The labels with the most CD editions on file are Werkstatt Recordings (35), NewRetroWave (22), Swiss Dark Nights (20), Blood Music (14), Lazerdiscs Records (14) and Studio In Time (14). Werkstatt Recordings and NewRetroWave also lead the tape lists, so the labels that press physical tend to press several formats. A few well-known albums have CD and vinyl on file together, such as OutRun and TRILOGY.
Which labels press physical?
Taking vinyl, tape and CD together, a short list keeps recurring. NewRetroWave (full profile) appears in all three top lists, with 33 vinyl, 27 tape and 22 CD editions on file. Werkstatt Recordings (profile) leads for tape and CD. Stratford Ct. has 21 vinyl and 21 tape. The metal-linked, goth and minimal-synth labels dominate vinyl. And the biggest label in the archive for vaporwave, DMT Tapes FL, contributes tape.
If you are collecting, two practical notes. First, check the edition: our format field says a physical edition exists on some release, not that your copy is the first pressing. Second, ask the label. Small labels often sell directly from their Bandcamp pages, in short runs, and a sold-out record is the rule, not the exception. For a wider map of who is active, the labels guide gives each label an active, quiet or silent status; and because artists who press their own records often sit outside labels, how much synthwave is self-released is the companion read.
Records with physical editions to start with
Ten records, each with at least two formats on file, running from a vaporwave tape to game scores and metal-linked darksynth.
- Macintosh Plus · 2011 · Beer on the Rug · LPThe vaporwave landmark, with tape and vinyl editions on file and a 2017 pink-vinyl pressing reported by Tiny Mix Tapes.
- Power Glove · 2016 · Ubisoft Music · LPA game score with all four formats on file, and an Invada vinyl release before it.
- Carpenter Brut · 2015 · No Quarter Prod · COMPThe three EPs together on CD and vinyl, from 2015.
- Perturbator · 2014 · Blood Music · LPBlood Music's 2014 landmark, with CD, vinyl and tape editions on file.
- Survive · 2016 · Relapse Records · LPThe 2016 album from the band behind Stranger Things, on CD and vinyl from Relapse Records.
Questions about physical synthwave
Why is so little synthwave on cassette in the databases?
Partly because the music is mostly digital, and partly because cassettes are the format databases miss. Tapes are often short runs sold from a label's own Bandcamp page and never entered in MusicBrainz or Discogs. DMT Tapes FL, for example, has 1,192 listed releases but only 14 with a tape edition on file.
Does "vinyl on file" mean a record was released on vinyl first?
No. The format field records any edition of a release. An album first released digitally in 2013 shows as vinyl if it was pressed in 2019, so the year and the format can come from different moments.
Which synthwave labels press the most vinyl?
By listed releases with a vinyl edition, NewRetroWave leads with 33, then Stratford Ct. with 21 and two darkwave and minimal-synth labels, Oráculo Records and Hertz-Schrittmacher, with 18 each.
Is the drop in physical releases since 2018 real?
Partly. The fall from 487 to 156 releases with a physical edition is large, but physical editions are added to databases after the fact, so recent years are undercounted. Tape's fall (188 in 2018, 21 in 2025) is steeper than vinyl's (211 to 102), which fits a real shift as well as lag.
Sources
- It's True – Cassette Tapes Are Making A Comeback · Music 3.0, Bobby Owsinski, 16 Jan 2017
- Retro-Futurism: Are cassettes still a thing? · Treble, Joseph Moore, 22 Mar 2016
- Invada to release Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon soundtrack for Record Store Day · FACT Magazine, 13 Mar 2014
- Hotline Miami (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia
- The Tape Label Report, October 2021 · Bandcamp Daily, 21 Oct 2021
- Macintosh Plus's 'Floral Shoppe' is coming to vinyl · Tiny Mix Tapes, 7 Aug 2017
- Label Profile: Blood Music · Bandcamp Daily, 11 Dec 2017