Why Your Vinyl Record Is Missing Songs

The vinyl tracklist can be very different from what you know
Posted Aug 16, 2025 4:52 PM CDT
Why Your Vinyl Record Is Missing Songs
People browse through vinyl records inside Amoeba Music in San Francisco, Saturday, July 19, 2025.   (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vasquez)

If you're one of the many audiophiles embracing the soaring popularity of vinyl LPs and you think something sounds a little different from what you're used to streaming, you're not hearing things—very literally. As NPR reports, it's becoming increasingly common for physical versions of albums to have different tracklists from what's available for streaming, and that can mean losing lots of songs. Ask anyone who preordered vinyl copies of Beyonce's Cowboy Carter or Lil Wayne's Tha Carter VI. Beyonce's album is missing five tracks and the Lil Wayne LP features only six of the 19 songs on the digital release. And all of this comes as vinyl sales grew in the US for the 18th straight year to a record $1.4 billion which, adjusting for inflation, is the highest sales for the format since 1988.

So why hold anything back now? Part of it is strictly physics. While a digital album can be as long as an artist's vision dictates, vinyl has to stick to about 22 to 25 minutes per side. Cam Sarrett of Nashville-based United Record Pressing said: "The format has its limitations. Which is either a bothersome thing or a beautiful thing, depending on how you look at it." But another factor is that albums are often set for release long before the artist has finished the music. Warner Music Group vinyl strategist Billy Fields said, "We're all trying to eat the cake before it's baked, essentially."

And there could be another even potentially more cynical factor: It only takes four songs for Billboard to consider something an album, and selling those four songs on a vinyl record or even a CD (which also have constraints) all counts toward total album sales across formats, which is huge for major artists. But the BBC theorizes that the main reason some songs don't make the physical releases is because they just aren't written when the vinyl goes into production. But whatever the reason, it won't help Lil Wayne fan Alexis Collins who told NPR she was bummed her vinyl copy of Tha Carter V contains just a fraction of the tracks she loves. "The vinyl itself has a nice sound to it, but I don't believe it has the best songs from the album on it."

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