CDs and Vinyl outselling digital downloads

At the moment I only stream. But I also make sure I have local copies of everything I stream. If and when Amazon stops letting you stream uploaded music, I'll have to listen to those titles locally.

 

I do. There are many times when I hear a particular song I like that I don't want the entire album it comes from, either contemporary or from the past, and go to Amazon and download the MP3 for 99 cents or whatever. Easy way to own a song I like, and I like to own, not stream.

 

That's largely what I've attempted to do with it--via song shuffle, streaming is like my ideal radio station.

 

Did that article mention player piano sales?

 

Yes, the report says that overall, physical media value dropped 4% from 2016 to 2017, and that was because, as you note, the rise in LP revenue was more than offset by the decline in CD revenue.

The CD stats actually remind me of what a long run CD has had at the top of physical media. In 2016, CD unit sales fell below 100 million discs for the first time in 30 years. This year, CD sales revenue might fall below $1 Billion, that hasn't happened since 1986 either.

Overall, CD has been the #1 physical format for 27 straight years, since 1991, and has been ahead of vinyl for 30 straight years, since 1988. Vinyl may overtake CD in the next couple of years, and that will be a tremendous comeback story, but it won't diminish CD's longevity as a dominant physical format.

 

LPs have been outselling CDs for over 5 straight years, and it's not even close.

Whwee do you get your information?

 

Yay!
Particularly the CD part.

 

Holy Cds and Vinyls Batman!!!

 

What does this post mean? The statement has 3 formats. Illegal downloads and streaming win? Not in the long term in any event!

 

And the people who buy SACD and LPs are the people who buy 2 copies of each and compare the SACD vs the new reissued vinyl vs their 70s minty OG vs the DCC Gold disc vs the MFSL Ultradisc II w/the remix vs the West German target vs the Vietnamese bootleg vs the old wrinkly cassette they found in the garage...

My point is...we purchase multiple copies of the same records. But it's only sustainable for a short period, if that makes sense...I know I'm on the wrong side of 30...and not going backwards in age, if you catch my drift.

 

CD & LP sales > physical media

RIAA Releases 2017 Year-End Music Industry Revenue Report

March 22, 2018 | RIAA News


According to the RIAA 2017 RIAA Revenue Statistics :

Summary
Vinyl revenues up 10% to $395 million.

Acc. RIAA,
1,569,600,000 ( $1.5696 billion ) in sales represents new physical media sales
(units shipped) in the U.S. alone, and does not incl. used CD & LP sales through the independent record stores. > over 1,500 outlets in the U.S.

note:
in many countries, including the UK and the U.S., the specialty record store business is booming with hundreds opening between 2013 and 2016.

 

I’m one of the consumers who streams. Sorry, everyone, I understand the issues around it but $11 a month to keep thousands upon thousands of albums has let me listen to farrr more music than I ever have. There’s little risk taking with it without it for me. I never would have listened to The Doors, ABBA, Cream etc. Before I was getting a Beatles song a month. I added the entire discography in 20 seconds.

 

I'm sorry but this is incorrect. CDs are down and steadily in decline, but far exceed lp sales.
In 2017, CDs sold 85.4 million units LPs - 14.3 million.

 

Relax people, it's a 1.5 BILLION dollar
annual industry in the U.S., never mind
global statistics. It's not going anywhere
soon.

 

Leave your computer on playing files for 3 days prior so it’s nice and ‘warmed up’ ready for critical listening........

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong
with streaming. There's lossless
stream, and there is MP3 for those
unable to tell or care about the
difference between lossy and
lossless audio.

I prefer physical over streaming
because it is ISP independent and

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.

 

Is that how you're supposed to do it?

 

I have seen an increase of digital only archive releases recently which in the past would have been released physically.

Something I'm wondering is what the heck will happen to archival reissues if the industry goes exclusively streaming? Because those types of releases aren't suited to streaming services for a variety of reasons.

 

I'd say it's a matter of preference. I went all-file-based a long time ago and currently I have a Mini PC that's only for musical playback. It takes about a minute to boot (maybe even less) and the HD is already connected. I turn it on and off like a CD player, but I find it much easier to cue an album in the player software, then to go through the CDs in my shelf. I still buy physical media, but only to rip it to my hard drive. After that, it mainly takes up space. If I get a better deal on a lossless or hi-res download, I take that route.

 

So you play files directly off the HD?

 

Good point. And it follows reasoning
to points of concern, e.g. cause to
continue supporting physical media:
CD and LP titles have been known to go
out of print and remain unavailable for
years on end - for licensing reasons or
other legal issues which consumers have
no control over. Is it not conceivable that
the availability of material being
streamed is subject to change without
notice, due to circumstances beyond the
user's control? Corporations have only
monetary interest in what is of intrinsic
cultural importance to the rest of us.
Imagine waking up one morning to
discover that, overnight, an invisible
hand had reached into your LP crate
and removed several of your favorite
titles which are irreplaceable.

 

For me, listening to my digital music is not a hassle since I don't do my actual listening on the computer except when I'm doing something else. When I want to listen to my music, that's what my Walkman DAP (it can play hi-res files) is for. I want to listen to music, I get my Walkman, put on my headphones, select what I want to hear, and then enjoy. It rarely takes me more than a few seconds to get to any song/album I want since I keep most of what I want to listen to on my player.

 

Yeah, the phone is the wrong tool for that.

Seems strange to me. My computers are always on and my TBs of hi-rez music are on NAS drives that are always accessible. I can play choose and music faster than you can physically locate the disc and extricate it from sleeve or case......................and I don't have to put it away afterwards.

 

This is one reason I still buy records. Gonna be hand cranking that gramophone when the world ends.

 

That is a significant issue. Despite CD being around for about 35 years, there are many LPs that still have not been released on CD. As an example, in 1982 Leslie Pearl released an album called Words & Music, which resulted in a minor hit "If The Love Fits, Wear It." Despite the hit, as far as I know the album was not released on CD in the U. S., although it was finally released as a download last year.