Posted on 09/07/2019 9:08:03 AM PDT by fidelis
Sales of vinyl records have enjoyed constant growth in recent years. At the same time, CD sales are in a nosedive. Last year, the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) mid-year report suggested that CD sales were declining three times as fast as vinyl sales were growing. In February, the RIAA reported that vinyl sales accounted for more than a third of the revenue coming from physical releases.
This trend continues in RIAA’s 2019 mid-year report, which came out on Thursday. Vinyl records earned $224.1 million (on 8.6 million units) in the first half of 2019, closing in on the $247.9 million (on 18.6 million units) generated by CD sales. Vinyl revenue grew by 12.8% in the second half of 2018 and 12.9% in the first six months of 2019, while the revenue from CDs barely budged. If these trends hold, records will soon be generating more money than compact discs.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollingstone.com ...
Never trust atoms - they make up everything.
No one uses either. They go on Amazon or ITunes and down load them.
Now bring back a record player that we can stack records on. I hate having to change a record every 20 minutes.
“Digital is for people who cannot handle reality.... “
Vinyl is for people that have never heard reality.
First the have to filter reality so reality doesn’t crash the master disk then the have to massage it back before going to the Amp.
Not to mention the mechanical parts all adding distortion and limiting bandwidth.
My ears are shot. Too much shooting and industrial noise. So digital sounds better to me. No hisses or pops.
My brother who rebuild old tube amps for a purer sound uses digital music also. He can tell the difference between tube amps and transistor amps but not between lp and digital music.
“Now bring back a record player that we can stack records on. I hate having to change a record every 20 minutes.”
I digitized all my brother’s records cleaning up the clicks.
Now he has all on a USB stick.
“He can tell the difference between tube amps and transistor amps but not between lp and digital music.”
That is surprising!
I wondered that too. How much do total CD and record sales compare to the record sales of decades ago, for example?
Aren’t more people listening online or downloading music, than listening to either a record or a compact disc?
The biggest change in vinyl LPs recently is 180 gram vinyl.
https://blog.fluance.com/180-gram-vinyl/
Some of the LPs of some of the top soloists and groups are being re-pressed - remastered from original sources - in 180 gram vinyl. They get premium prices.
Vinyl needs to enjoy its short-lived ascendancy. As soon as those 8 tracks hit the market, vinyl will be on the ropes.
The place I used to go buy vinyl at used to have a great location where at the back they had a large collection of classical music records (many going for a couple of bucks or so). Some absolutely lovely finds with ones that were made in the 1950s or 60s that still sound great. I could still spend hours in a place like that (probably would drive a prospective girlfriend nuts, lol).
I’m waiting for Reel-to-Reel to come back.
“The biggest change in vinyl LPs recently is 180 gram vinyl.”
That is not a big change. The biggest changes have been to the equipment used to produce the master.
I have a couple of hundred vinyl records (mostly from the 60s70s). I started buying CDs to replace these in the early 2000s. Then I found out I could just download the songs so from 2010 on I do just that. I don’t like any music made after 1979 or so. Though I like music from big band, rock and roll, blues, bluegrass, country, and classical.
CDs have no place today. Vinyl remains the preferred format for audiophiles. For the overwhelming majority of us who just want to listen to music, streaming services and digital downloading are vast improvements over the CD model.
One would hope. CDs as a flooring option doesn’t work so well.
Hey Rolling Stone, how many petroleum products are used, not only in the production of Vinyl and CDs, but in the raw materials? Vinyl = Plastics = petroleum (i.e. Big Oil Villain)
This isn’t a triumph for vinyl as much as a decline in CD sales to MP3s and other digital download media.
Still, I sold off my vinyl collection of 70s and 80s music before moving to Panama and made about $130 in the process. Then I sold about 98% of my CD collection and made around $250.
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