The report indicates that, for the first time since the 1980s, vinyl outsold CDs. Vinyl album sales rose by four percent from the first half of 2019 to $232 million. That accounts for 62 percent of physical revenue during the first six months of the year, but just four percent of the overall revenue from recorded music.
~ https://www.engadget.com/riaa-streaming-vinyl-cds-mid-year-report-153215821.html
Its OK
Its only the US, who cares ;)
But is it physical or revenue sales (The cost Of LPs nowadays vs CDs)
Nice, but there's a little detail:
streaming accounted for 85 percent of music revenue
Can you imagine being able to travel back in time to the early 80s and telling a yuppie in his luxury apartment that his cherished CD collection he's been carefully amassing and methodically listening to whilst gulping down Chardonnays would be deemed "square" and vinyls would be the fashionista's choice again by the 2020s!?
Old tech is cool... flat earth is a thing... fascists disguised as "the chosen ones" in power again - sometimes I wonder whether we've taken a detour somewhere in the 2000s and ended up living in an Orwellian alternative future ourselves. ::)
Very interesting, especially as this is the first time I have looked at music media market data in nearly 30 years!
A couple of things stand out for me:
* Astonished to see how dominant streaming services have become in relation to outright bought media (physical and digital)
* Even so vinyl has held its market share in value terms for the overall maket
* . . and crushed the competition in outright owned media
* Overall pricing pressure
* . . in all identifiable segments except vinyl where uniquely market value has grown faster than volume
* Surprised total market hasn't been stronger with WFH and people clearly looking for entertainment
* Vinyl clearly the most attractive segment currently given favourable volume and pricing trends
And, most of the vinyl I have seen comes from digital masters!! :)
And, most of the vinyl I have seen comes from digital masters!! :)
That is undoubtedly true, but you know what they say: "the customer is always right" 😎
In online world physical media is a fetish.
And in the real world it's a niche - nothing more nothing less.
And in the real world it's a niche - nothing more nothing less.
In the real world which you appear to define as something that substantially doesn't exist in any tangible form?
Objectively streaming is a service rather than a product. And what is happening in the music market appears very similar to the trend in software, where vendors have been trying with great success to move customers away from one off purchases to subscription servives in an attempt to lock them in indefinitely.
I don't believe that trend is sustainable in the medium term, but if people start returning to outright purchases in any numbers I doubt vinyl can continue to grow market share, or even stand still for that matter. But for now this is clearly what's hot for both consumers and suppliers, and to argue anything else is to deny reality.
I don't think streaming for services like audio and video is going anywhere, why do you think they aren't sustainable in the medium term? I'm not even sure SAAS isn't sustainable, especially when much of that software is catered to professionals.
I don't think streaming for services like audio and video is going anywhere, why do you think they aren't sustainable in the medium term? I'm not even sure SAAS isn't sustainable, especially when much of that software is catered to professionals.
Streaming was already taking an 85% share of the market defined most broadly in value terms in the 1st half, up from 80% last year. As such these growth rates simply can't be sustained beyond the magic 100% barrier!
I'd ideally like to understand more about the market share breakdown before commenting with more certainly, but I also have a hunch that recent growth trends are cyclical and susceptible to an economic downturn, which is in my view inescapable. I suspect many people are just signing up to this sort of thing without giving it too much thought, but if they start to feel the economic pinch they will start to look much more closely at this sort of non-essential fixed expenditure. Which should be less of an issue for outright putchases, since this is more of a deliberate purchasing decision.
FWIW, I suspect the situation and demand drivers are slightly different in software. I haven't been following that market too closely either but it seems to me demand in the last 5 years or so has also been driven by somewhat exceptional factors such as the move to 4K video I don't see replicated soon. And when the economy turns down everybody simply becomes more cost conscious generally, with unnecessary fixed costs the first to go.
By "online" I didn't mean streaming only, but also files that you download and store for offline playback - that's what you buy these days if you listen to music. These days you buy CDs only if you also need a feast for your eyes or hands... and you buy vinyl if you're a hipster :P
By "online" I didn't mean streaming only, but also files that you download and store for offline playback - that's what you buy these days if you listen to music. These days you buy CDs only if you also need a feast for your eyes or hands... and you buy vinyl if you're a hipster :P
In fact the digital download segment of the market fell to $351m from $451m the year before.
At the same time Vinyl sales grew modestly from $224m to $232m growing the market share in outright purchased from 24% to 32%, but CD sales also plunged from $248m to $130m.
So the overall purchased market fell by $210m to $727m, with that and then some shifting to subscription services, where despite this growth unit revenues fell presumably reflecting fierce price competition.
Speaking of which I use Google Music somewhat, and see that is up for the chop to be somehow replaced by Youtube; does anybody know more about how that transition will work?
@Groove Re: Google Play Music:
They are leaving the selling market. They are entirely killing buying music from Google Play store and they "migrate" your bought content to Youtube Music as "uploaded content".
So you are basically left with the free service with ads, or the monthly subscription service of music that you cannot download offline, except for using it on youtube music, for a limited time (less than a month).
It feels a bit as a spotify now.
They are leaving the selling market. They are entirely killing buying music from Google Play store and they "migrate" your bought content to Youtube Music as "uploaded content".
Thanks Jaz. Do you know if they are shutting down the ability to upload your own music? And whether your own music transferred across to Youtube becomes publicly searchable and accessible?
In fact the digital download segment of the market fell to $351m from $451m the year before.
At the same time Vinyl sales grew modestly from $224m to $232m growing the market share in outright purchased from 24% to 32%, but CD sales also plunged from $248m to $130m.
So the overall purchased market fell by $210m to $727m, with that and then some shifting to subscription services, where despite this growth unit revenues fell presumably reflecting fierce price competition.
All the numbers look legit - downloads being on top, vinyl being expensive, increasing number of hipsters, CDs getting obsolete, etc :)
And in the real world it's a niche - nothing more nothing less.
In the real world which you appear to define as something that substantially doesn't exist in any tangible form?
It does. But you know such market is being kept alive more by its hobbyists' stubbornness/deep pockets (hipsters and the like, as rutra put it) than by any kind of innovation itself - which for any technology is something as unstable as the elation I'm certain luddites in the 19th century felt after wrecking another piece of cotton mill machinery.
Anyone could tell then and can now such "dances of victory" are not bound to last.
It's of course a serious disaster that vinyl is outselling CD. The only reason this is happening is because with vinyl, due to technical reasons (or technical limitations of the vinyl format, which in this case happens to be a good thing -- for vinyl), the record companies can't destroy the dynamic range of the music albums (and singles) they're selling, in order to make the music sound louder (aka the Loudness Wars). With CD and digital downloads, the record companies aren't limited by this restriction because CDs and lossless/lossy codecs aren't restricted to a specific loudness level, so with CD, DVD-Audio and so on, they can destroy the dynamic range just to make albums sound louder, and they have been doing so since the 90s. As such, vinyl while clearly an inferior format as far as sound quality and dynamic range are concerned, ironically have better dynamic range than CD today, mostly so anyway, although they've been trying to downgrade the dynamic range of vinyl as well in recent years, but due to technical differences from digital, they can't downgrade the dynamic range of vinyl to the same extent as they have done with CDs. This is quite ironic in any case as CD is definitely a superior format for sound quality and dynamic range compared to vinyl. While vinyl may have the full 192kHz frequency and CD only has 44.1kHz, that doesn't matter because we can't hear above 20kHz anyway, so CD is still far above the human hearing range.
Anyway, it's a sad day for us who care about music quality, that vinyl is outselling CD. Of course vinyl isn't outselling digital music in general (which CD is part of), but the issue here is that modern CDs are mastered with loudness in mind, whereas vinyl isn't and can't be due to technical limitations, which again is a good thing for vinyl but it's not a good thing for music in general, because CD and digital audio is a cleaner sound with superior dynamic range. Here's a good article about this issue:
The audible consequence has been that the 'volume' of pop, rock and other music recorded and released on commercial CDs has risen steadily since the late 1980s, with a corresponding reduction in dynamics and, in many cases, a trend towards a more aggressive and fatiguing sound character — all in an attempt to make each track as loud as or louder than the perceived competition. It's bewildering to think that the audio format that offered the greatest dynamic range potential ever made available to the consumer is now routinely used to store music deliberately processed with the least possible dynamic range in the history of recorded music!
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war
Point is, the only reason vinyl is outselling CD is because most people today don't buy their music on physical storage media, and the few who do, buy vinyl because they know that the record companies haven't been monkeying with the dynamic range to the same extent as they do with their CD versions.
It's of course a serious disaster that vinyl is outselling CD.
No it ain't. CD had a happy life and is dying peacefully. Vinyl is alive thanks to the insistence of mostly fashionistas and placebophiles who won't just let go of it, as it is the case with many surpassed technologies.
Also, regarding the "better" dynamic range, I think you should give our wiki a good read:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Myth:_Vinyl_sounds_better_than_CD
Also, regarding the "better" dynamic range, I think you should give our wiki a good read:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Myth:_Vinyl_sounds_better_than_CD
I think you should tone done the hyperbole and read what he wrote more carefully!
Looking at some of the comments on this board, you would think during the golden years of the music recording industry powered by vinyl, turntable owners and FM radio listeners were chained up or placed in stocks to secure them firmly in place while they were subjected to the unspeakable torture of listening to records! LOL
Fact is CDs are old and mature technology too. Ignoring the odd bit of crackle and pop, basic audio technology bumped up against the limits of human hearing a long time ago, as many here go to such lengths to rightly point out to those making extravagant claims about giant leaps forward.
None of this is cutting edge stuff, and going on about who won the "war" is about as relevant to daily life today as who won WWII!
No it ain't. CD had a happy life and is dying peacefully.
It's not that I'm opposed to the death of CD, it's that CD is a technically superior format when compared to vinyl, and vinyl is possibly going to survive CD. This is indeed not only a problem, but a disaster. CD is a good standard. Doesn't mean we have to have CD around until the next millennium, but why go backwards with storing and playing music? Music is not only human culture but also
history. We should record and store music in the highest quality formats available. It's like retiring Blu-Ray and going back to VHS or something, lol.
Streaming is lossy crap anyway, but thankfully we can still buy music in lossless digital files (FLAC and so on), for now anyway. Problem is the hypercompressed dynamic range when buying lossless digital files online. That's the real issue here, and why vinyl is still around and thriving, because they don't master vinyl for loudness to the same extent as they do with CD and FLAC albums and so on. It wasn't always the case that the record companies hypercompressed the dynamic range for CD though; back in the 80s and early 90s, almost all CD albums were properly mastered with great dynamic range. Then as computer software became advanced enough, they began destroying the dynamic range of almost all CDs produced just to get a louder sound, starting from the mid 90s and worsened after around 2000 or so (and today, the dynamic range of pretty much every newly released and remastered CD/digital album is a joke). This is why people are buying vinyl, because with vinyl, studio albums are still generally mostly properly mastered, and when they aren't mastered well with the dynamic range, it's just not as bad as it is with modern CDs. This creates a false impression that vinyl is a high definition format and has a superior sound quality and far higher reslution and dynamic range compared to CD, because most young people in their teens and early 20s and so on, haven't heard the old, original albums released in the 1980s, so their impression is that vinyl sounds better than CD, when in actuality, it's because the record companies are purposely destroying the dynamic range for the CD version, whereas they can't do this for the vinyl version.
Vinyl is alive thanks to the insistence of mostly fashionistas and placebophiles who won't just let go of it, as it is the case with many surpassed technologies.
Yeah exactly, so why should vinyl survive CD, when CD is clearly a superior storage medium for music? Again, I'm not opposed to the death of CD, but if I had to choose, I'd rather kill off vinyl.
As I was saying, CD is a good standard. Personally I think we need an upgraded standard for music, something like Blu-Ray albums with every track being lossless 24-bit/192kHz and perhaps also 7.1 surround sound and so on (although stereo is good enough, really). If we can't have that, properly mastered CDs with full dynamic range is obviously far better than vinyl.
Also, regarding the "better" dynamic range, I think you should give our wiki a good read:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Myth:_Vinyl_sounds_better_than_CD
I'm not sure what you're trying to point out with this wiki? It's saying basically exactly what I was saying. Yes, CD definitely has a superior dynamic range compared to vinyl, as stated in the wiki:
The dynamic range of vinyl, when evaluated as the ratio of a peak sinusoidal amplitude to the peak noise density at that sine wave frequency, is somewhere around 80 dB. Under theoretically ideal conditions, this could perhaps improve to 120 dB. The dynamic range of CDs, when evaluated on a frequency-dependent basis and performed with proper dithering and oversampling, is somewhere around 150 dB. Under no legitimate circumstances will the dynamic range of vinyl ever exceed the dynamic range of CD, under any frequency, given the wide performance gap and the physical limitations of vinyl playback. More discussion at Hydrogenaudio.So... you were saying?
And on top of that, no pops and clicks with CD either, which means a cleaner sound for those of us who put quality above retro nostalgia and similar nonsense.
Wax cylinders are better sounding. 😂
How much vinyl comes with download code these days?
When physical items become merchandise, it isn't that hard to see that a bigger package has an upper hand.
they know that the record companies haven't been monkeying with the dynamic range
I wouldn't put that much faith into technical expertise of vinyl buyers.
Under no legitimate circumstances will the dynamic range of vinyl ever exceed the dynamic range of CD, under any frequency, given the wide performance gap and the physical limitations of vinyl playback.
Does "the record company compressed the heck out of the master that ended up on CD but not the master that ended up on vinyl count?
(Which begs the question, why can't they use the same master, minus RIAA curve and stuff like that, on CD?)
(Which begs the question, why can't they use the same master, minus RIAA curve and stuff like that, on CD?)
Because they have chosen the wrong side in the loudness war, but
don't care about how the vinyl sounds, as it is a niche product?
Dan Swanö was hit by that record company policy (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=98199.msg866222#msg866222) and chose to include
files with the full dynamic range mix on the CD. You would get "lossless" with dynamic range 6, and mp3s with dynamic range 11, the latter from the master he could use for the vinyl because the label didn't interfere with that one.
Because they have chosen the wrong side in the loudness war, but don't care about how the vinyl sounds, as it is a niche product?
Perhaps these people at the labels know exactly what they are doing? After all, loundness is marketing, vinyl is marketing, streaming is marketing; these people sell, and they will do anything to get bigger numbers. All of this works the way it does because this maximises ROI. The 'media' industry is about maximising profit, not quality.
How much vinyl comes with download code these days?
When physical items become merchandise, it isn't that hard to see that a bigger package has an upper hand.
Only thing better with vinyl is its higher resolution cover art. Vinyl as a format however, has no advantages over CD, none whatsoever.
they know that the record companies haven't been monkeying with the dynamic range
I wouldn't put that much faith into technical expertise of vinyl buyers.
I wouldn't either. The average vinyl buyer obviously doesn't know what the hell dynamic range is. However, pseudo-audiophiles have been hyping up vinyl for years now on various forums and such, that vinyl sounds better, and this word of mouth has been spreading to less tech savvy people that vinyl has better sound because it goes avove 44.1 kHz and that analogue sounds better than digital and similar nonsense Disregarding the very annoying clicks and pops that undeniably come with all vinyls (unless you're using a laser turntable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable), which are ridiculously expensive anyway), which might not be that audible with laptop speakers, but they're definitely audible once you listen to vinyl through headsets and such. Anyway, vinyl does sound better not because it's capable of sounding better than CD, but because the records companies cannot destroy the dynamic range of vinyl due to the technical limitations of vinyl as a format. Vinyl rarely goes below DR 9 or so, whereas with CD and digital streaming, they can go down to DR 3, which sounds VERY LOUD, and the waveform is basically a brick at that point; no dynamic range whatsoever.
Does "the record company compressed the heck out of the master that ended up on CD but not the master that ended up on vinyl count?
Yeah, pretty much. For the most part, they still master albums properly at first, then they use the correctly mastered album tracks for vinyl and take the correctly mastered tracks and compress the hell out of their dynamic range and put it on the CD version and also provide these DR destroyed tracks for Spotify, Tidal and similar services. This is also why buying lossless FLACs is kind of pointless if it's a newly released album we're talking about (or "remaster"), because a lossy high bitrate mp3 with full dynamic range will sound much better than a lossless copy of the same song but with poor dynamic range. So while lossless is great, it doesn't necessarily translate to higher quality. We should demand full dynamic range before we buy it.
(Which begs the question, why can't they use the same master, minus RIAA curve and stuff like that, on CD?)
Because the record companies are run by profit driven morons, who don't care about artistic quality. It works exactly like this:
"If you put the most important cultural elements in society into the hands of commercial people who want to make a profit they will bring it down to the lowest common denominator." - Richard Hoggart
Basically, the record companies are saying
you're too stupid to raise the volume yourself while listening to music, so we'll do it for you, even if that means the album will sound like crap. It's completely unnecessary to compress the dynamic range just to get an increase in volume. No benefits come from this practice, especially with ReplayGain being around, and other loudness normalization features in streaming services.
The underlying problem here is that record companies have been putting out increasingly bad music since the 80s ended, and to compensate for the lack of musical quality, they're raising the volume for you :) Now while a lot of good music was still being made in the 90s, the 90s was definitely a downgrade compared to the musical magic of the 80s. When the music industry seriously began compressing the dynamic range of music albums (and singles!) in the mid 90s or so, this also went hand in hand with the record companies okaying crappy music (useless boy bands, generic autotunes-style made songs and so on). Gone were the real rock bands at this point that actually composed their own music and wrote their own lyrics. Now it was up to a handful of people, "musicians" if you can call them that (you know, the Max Martin types), who did all the music on their PCs, and mastered the "music" with mandatory hypercompression of the dynamic range. These few "musicians" have been writing most songs to the Britney Spears, Christina Aguileras, Beyoncés, Justin Timberlakes, Justin Biebers and so on. So they're in full control and they're taking orders from the record company CEOs that it's a natural law that modern music must sound as loud as possible, because God forbid that people won't like a song just because its volume isn't loud enough. You know, as opposed to back in the days, in the 1980s, when music was made with excellent dynamic range for the CD versions, and the music was really good too. You make good music, you won't need to apply inefficient band-aid like setting the volume really high at the expense of dynamic range.
If ReplayGain was around back in the days, we'd still have full dynamic range and all we had to do was to change the RG tag, and this wouldn't have been an issue. But ReplayGain came around the time when people began encoding their CDs to mp3 and so on, so ReplayGain was too late.
Perhaps these people at the labels know exactly what they are doing?
They don't. If they did, they wouldn't do what they're doing to the music. Basically, they're raping the music they're selling to us. It's really unacceptable.
After all, loundness is marketing, vinyl is marketing, streaming is marketing; these people sell, and they will do anything to get bigger numbers. All of this works the way it does because this maximises ROI. The 'media' industry is about maximising profit, not quality.
Yeah, profit above quality will always be a problem. That said, the issue here is that not only do these people not know what they're doing, but more importantly, the music industry isn't
regulated and
standardized. Standards are very important, and regulation is there to protect the people; in this case, our ears. Recently, EBU R 128 was developed to end the loudness wars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBU_R_128
EBU R 128 is a great standard. Unfortunately it hasn't been adopted industry-wide by the record companies, and it probably never will as long as these record companies are unregulated and therefore don't have to follow industry standards like EBU R 128. Some have been saying for a couple of years now, that Spotify's loudness normalization setting (basically Spotify's version of ReplayGain) is going to end the loudness war, however, that doesn't mean that the current content available on Spotify will suddenly get full dynamic range, because Spotify will need the original, uncompressed masters for that. Spotify's loudness normalization setting is a good thing, and some have speculated that it doesn't give an incentive to the record companies to compress the dynamic range for the sake of loudness, but I have yet to see any change here.
That said, not all musicians destroy the dynamic range of their albums. Some musicians still provide more or less acceptable dynamic range for the CD versions (though it's still not as good as the dynamic range was in the 80s). And we're talking about a small minority of contemporary musicians who don't monkey around with the CD dynamic range.
Here's a few articles that all say Spotify has ended the loudness wars:
https://theindustryobserver.thebrag.com/spotify-ended-loudness-wars/
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war
https://www.productionmusiclive.com/blogs/news/mastering-tip-the-end-of-loudness-war
It might be the case that Spotify and other streaming services will end the loudness war, but this sad state of affairs will remain like it is now for at least another decade or so. Personally I believe the record companies aren't destroying the dynamic range of the music they're selling us just to maximize profits (it's questionable if they're actually making a profit on louder music), but that it's intentional because they don't want to sell digital and lossless 24/192 of any music album with excellent, uncompressed dynamic range, whereas with vinyl it doesn't matter because vinyl is crap quality anyway. Think about it: if the music industry began selling uncompromised quality at full 24/192 and no dynamic range compression, as soon as people began ripping these albums to FLAC and uploading them on various piracy sites, you'd have studio level quality of the original masters, available for free. So the music industry I'm sure is content selling us music albums with destroyed dynamic range and giving us the misleading impression that it's high quality because it's lossless, as if lossless was the only criteria for quality.
Anyway, all that said (long wall of text here), vinyl is persisting due to it currently having better masters as far as the dynamic range is concerned, not because vinyl as a format has better dynamic range than CD (or any other digital format), but because the music industry has fallen in love with loudness and destroyed dynamic range for digital music. While vinyl really sounds like crap, most people can hear that albums on vinyl sound normal, whereas albums on CD sound loud as hell, and terrible, so they go with vinyl due to a misunderstanding that it's the analogue signal or something that gives off a better sound. People just aren't aware of dynamic range compression; it's a geek topic.
Also, regarding the "better" dynamic range, I think you should give our wiki a good read:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#Myth:_Vinyl_sounds_better_than_CD
I'm not sure what you're trying to point out with this wiki? It's saying basically exactly what I was saying. Yes, CD definitely has a superior dynamic range compared to vinyl, as stated in the wiki:
My bad! I'd just skimmed through your rather long post and got it all tits up.
Wax cylinders are better sounding. 😂
+1
I think we should use the same nonsensical tone when confronting flat earthers' by saying Earth isn't neither a globe nor a flat surface, but doughnut-shaped instead. :))
The underlying problem here is that record companies have been putting out increasingly bad music since the 80s ended, and to compensate for the lack of musical quality, they're raising the volume for you :) Now while a lot of good music was still being made in the 90s, the 90s was definitely a downgrade compared to the musical magic of the 80s. When the music industry seriously began compressing the dynamic range of music albums (and singles!) in the mid 90s or so, this also went hand in hand with the record companies okaying crappy music (useless boy bands, generic autotunes-style made songs and so on). Gone were the real rock bands at this point that actually composed their own music and wrote their own lyrics. Now it was up to a handful of people, "musicians" if you can call them that (you know, the Max Martin types), who did all the music on their PCs, and mastered the "music" with mandatory hypercompression of the dynamic range. These few "musicians" have been writing most songs to the Britney Spears, Christina Aguileras, Beyoncés, Justin Timberlakes, Justin Biebers and so on.
I think that every generation have said "they don't make music like they used to".
There is nothing inherently wrong with dynamic compression, autotune, Swedish producers or fit 18 year olds dancing while they sing. Just like there was nothing inherently wrong with Elvis moving his hips while performing, people making their guitar amplifier distort or the other pop music inventions. These things tends to move in waves, and just when people can not stand any more polished commercial sound, we have something like punk or grunge as counter reactions.
Loudness wars is somewhat unique in that it occurs very late in the process, someone might "master for Spotify" without the artist or recording engineers being involved in the process. And it is a solution to a technical problem that does not exist, or a solution applied at the wrong place, depending on perspective.
-k
I remember when cassette tapes were rivalling LP's in sales. And in some countries, they outsold LP's.
e.g.
"Between 1985 and 1992, the cassette tape was the most popular format in the UK."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Popularity_of_music_cassettes
I remember when cassette tapes were rivalling LP's in sales. And in some countries, they outsold LP's.
e.g.
"Between 1985 and 1992, the cassette tape was the most popular format in the UK."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Popularity_of_music_cassettes
And this was for sales.
Because the real reign of tapes was the "pirated" tapes that everybody exchanged hand to hand before this internet thing.
30 years later and surprisingly, after the CD has come and gone, as have MP3 files, and after a resurgence of vinyl, tape cassettes are on the up and up; and sales have been aided by the pandemic, not hindered.
~ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/03/28/global-revival-of-cassettes-has-flourished-during-the-pandemic/
30 years later and surprisingly, after the CD has come and gone, as have MP3 files, and after a resurgence of vinyl, tape cassettes are on the up and up; and sales have been aided by the pandemic, not hindered.
~ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/03/28/global-revival-of-cassettes-has-flourished-during-the-pandemic/
That's got to be some temporary fad/nostalgia thing as CD's are clearly all-around better than tapes/vinyl for general use. it's like they are going backwards, not forwards.
I get the reasoning why CD's are declining because people like digital stuff for convenience sake. but in terms of quality sound quality of something physical... CD's are obviously #1 all-around. that's why I don't see CD's totally disappearing anytime soon because as long as people continue to buy physical music, CD is the obvious default choice since nothing is better overall.
That's got to be some temporary fad/nostalgia thing
It's surprising to me but I assume it's a temporary thing. I haven't seen an update, but the statistics weren't for a full year. It seems to be mostly due to a decline in CD sales, and there has to be a ceiling on vinyl sales. I have a turntable (left-over from the old days and used for occasionally digitizing records) but I don't know of anyone else that has one. I wonder how much of this vinyl is actually
played or if it's mostly just "collected". And, there's just not that much music available on vinyl. Maybe after CDs are gone some vinyl will still remain in production, but as far as I know, major new releases are still released on CD.
And, these are
revenue statistics and vinyl costs about twice as much as the CD. ...Still, I'm surprised that the number of vinyl albums sold is anywhere near the number of CDs.
"Discogs data confirms that the most popular physical music format sold in 2020 was vinyl. In fact, vinyl sales have once again crossed a landmark threshold: a stunning 11,961,998 records sold through the Discogs, up 40.75% from 2019. CDs have also increased 37.18% year-over-year with 3,441,769 compact discs purchased. Interest in cassettes hasn’t died down, with a total of 282,798 sold through the Marketplace, a 33.33% increase over 2019."
~ https://blog.discogs.com/en/discogs-end-of-year-report-2020/
That's got to be some temporary fad/nostalgia thing as CD's are clearly all-around better than tapes/vinyl for general use. it's like they are going backwards, not forwards.
Well...IQ's are declining.
https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-reversal-20th-century-intelligence-boom-flynn-effect-intelligence
The RIAA has released its annual year-end revenue report, surveying the state of the recorded music industry at the end of 2020. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, trends across the past several years carried on: Streaming is up 13.4%, generating $10.1 billion last year compared to $8.9 billion in 2019, accounting for 83% of the total revenue of the industry. Vinyl sales have continued to rise, too, increasing a whopping 29.2% to $619.6 million, compared to $479.5 million in 2019.
~ https://pitchfork.com/news/vinyl-record-sales-increased-almost-30-in-2020-riaa-says/
Continuing one of the more surprising comebacks of the digital age, vinyl album sales in the United States have grown for the 15th consecutive year. In 2020, 27.5 million LPs were sold in the United States, up 46 percent compared to 2019 and more than 30-fold compared to 2006 when the vinyl comeback began.
~ https://www.statista.com/chart/7699/lp-sales-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=Continuing%20one%20of%20the%20more,when%20the%20vinyl%20comeback%20began.
With all due respect, this does not appear to be temporary nor a fad. There's clearly a niche, and with growing populations, niches are growing too. Not only, that but there's even new hardware being developed and sold.
See: https://www.redsharknews.com/audio/item/5539-the-surprising-return-of-the-professional-cassette-deck
I have a turntable (left-over from the old days and used for occasionally digitizing records) but I don't know of anyone else that has one.
Seriously? I know quite a few people with turntables...and most of them will ONLY listen to vinyl. They are hardcore vinyl fanatics. I personally think they're nuts, but to each his own.