The post office doesn’t deliver on Sunday, but it did raise rates again, effective starting Sunday July 13 2025.
The USPS (US Post Office) announced that their new rates have gone into effect, and it’s likely to cause some damage to business that ship products through the mail and the folks that receive them.
Headlining the increase is a 5¢ increase in the price of first class postage stamps, from 73¢ to 78¢. Services across the board are being raised, however, by an average of 7.4% according to the US Postal Service, though different services are increasing at wildly different rates.
For independent record producers and record shops, Media Mail — the service most often used for shipping vinyl records — is actually seeing a slight decrease, by approximately 2.5%. This follows an almost unceasing flow of increases in Media Mail service over the last few years (twice in 2024 alone).
Priority Mail is where the real damage is being felt, with shipments to Zone 4 through Zone 6 increasing by as much as 50%. Priority Mail Flat Rate is also increasing across the board, with the exception of the “Flat Rate Envelope.” Priority Mail Express rates are unchanged.
Complete info on the pricing changes in the dense, bureaucratic format of the Post Office is collected on the usps.com website.
Photo by Jiawei Zhao on Unsplash
