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RIAA Midyear Report: Vinyl Revenues Exceed Those of CDs— First Time Since 1982
https://www.analogplanet.com/content...irst-time-1982
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RIAA Midyear Report: Vinyl Revenues Exceed Those of CDs— First Time Since 1982
https://www.analogplanet.com/content...irst-time-1982
Wow! this is quite a turnaround...
There's probably also a price effect in this. Vinyl prices here about $30. and CD say $15+. So one LP counts for two CD's. In terms of sales volume (units) instead of $ revenue the picture may be somewhat different?
Thanks for the info.
Btw new Avatar pic appears to be in tune with the subject of the time, nice.
Interesting article, though I have a few different takeaways from it. First, the article only goes by dollars, not numbers of CD’s or Albums sold, but does comment on “Bundling” CD’s with concert ticket sales - you buy a ticket to a concert, you get a CD for free, but I’ll bet the artist counts the CD as an album sold, and since the RIAA records sales in $$ at “Estimated retail value”, the free CD probably also counts as $15 towards CD “Physical album” sales. Since CD’s cost nothing to produce now, but Vinyl does, I think no one is giving away Vinyl, but CD’s numbers are actually distorted to be higher than actual dollars sold, and the CD sales market is in worse shape than even this report states.
Second takeaway is if CD’s numbers sold are as bad as #1 suggests, and no one is giving away vinyl, as it is expensive to produce and production facilities are in high demand, the vinyl numbers suggest people are willing to pay significantly more for an album on vinyl ($30 on average?), so if an artist could find out who is buying their music on vinyl, they would be very savvy to focus marketing and social media efforts on vinyl buyers - private sales of VIP concert tickets, etc, assuming non-COVID, as these people would seem to be their true fans.
Lastly, let’s not kid ourselves about vinyl. Maybe it outsold CD’s, but with total music sales of $5.7 billion, and ALL physical media combined only selling $376 million, or 6.5% of the total, Streaming services have killed the wildebeest, and vinyl and CD’s are fighting over who gets to chew on the tail. I would like to see high-Rez streaming services try to compete with vinyl in terms of music involvement - meta-data, exclusive living room concerts, etc.
Just my $.02.
HCSGuy ... agree with most of your post.
My son (despite his Master's Degree) makes secondary income from selling records on DISCOGS. (4,596 feedbacks, 100% positive) He grew up in Portland and thus has always had an interest in the PUNK genre.
I pickup interesting records and send to him (now in Chicago) . Although PUNK has little interest for me , have more knowledge of it than most my age.
There are more of those "artists" than you would suspect, and AFAIK , all release on 7 inch vinyl. That must have spurred the sale of turntables, including those sub $100 plastic Chinese ones.
At least around here "spinning vinyl" is cool. :cool:
We have a couple of used record shows a year and they are very well attended. Sure that used LP's across the country are not included in those totals either.
Portland also claims more "used record stores per capita" than any major city in the US.
Used Cd's have zilch for value (maybe with a few exceptions) .... and as weird as it sounds, cassette tapes have better value than CD's. R2R tapes even more.
Other than "audiophiles", collectors, and old farts, I don't know anyone who still spin silver discs.Quote:
Originally Posted by SEAWOLF97
Not that many spin the licorice pizzas either, but lots of folks seem to like to buy them.
Widget
we just buy them to eat up that extra storage space around the house. :blink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Widget
It is all but certain that those looking for the fidelity of Redbook have gone en masse to streaming. The listening is undiminished; the delivery medium has shifted. The euphonics and nostalgia patrol that is vinyl is completely unaffected by streaming delivery and this has to affect the relative numbers a great deal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Widget
Put another way, everyone streaming at 44.1 is listening to a "CD". Sony's baby is bigger than ever. And Nyquist-Shannon is still the preferred listening mode for audio aware music enthusiasts.
In the same sense SACD is a raging success. The audio technology (DSD) is on every Blu-ray disc.