CDs and Vinyl outselling digital downloads

Streaming is also an enemy of the industry. It's a licensing nightmare, and pays out VERY little. fractions of pennies for tons of plays.

 

At the moment, yes. A hard drive connected to the Mini PC. Before that I used a NAS, but that takes longer to boot, unless you leave it on all the time.

 

Good. Downloads are .. well there wasn't a picture of a steaming poop ...

 

I don't think that I can agree with that. Even today, only a fraction of people buying vinyl are audiophiles.

 

And The Steve Hoffman Forum Members contribute a large portion of that 1.5 BILLION $.

 

According to the linked article, digital download revenues were $1.3 billion in 2017. Also, digital downloads accounted for 15% of total music industry revenue while physical media accounted for 17%—not a huge difference.

At any rate, that’s a whole lot of “nobody”s.

 

Yeah! The full year report is out. I was looking forward to this

Downloads - old news really. 2016 showed the same; drop in download sales.

Interesting that vinyl sales increased by 5% v 2016 whereas they only increased 2% in 2016 v 2015. (year before: 28% increase v 2014)

CD sales, still declining but not as much as in the past three years

Huge amounts are streaming though. Big increases there.

 

But what size fraction? And what would happen to that fraction if physical music media become synonymous with "best version possible"?
Cuz my opinion is if physical media cannot establish a business case for itself, it will be gone with the digital wind.

 

Yeah, that's the free market. But it's already made a business case for itself or the pressing plants wouldn't be full-up. We wouldn't be at or near capacity with just audiophile releases.

 

I think it's almost a 100% guarantee that CD revenue will dip below $1B by the end of 2018.

Two years is a bit tight to beat LP sales though, unless there's a massive decline this year in CD sales, like what happened in 2015, and a huge spike in lp sales (dollar wise). Revenue wise CD generate 2.7 times more than LP sales so there's a lot of catching up to do and a lot of declining to do. For both formats, their recent trends have slowed. CD sales declining less, LP sales increasing less. I don't think they'll even be close to each because by the time CD sales hit level that LP sales are at, it's likely LP sales will have begun to decline too. Hard to say what kind of legs LP sales have. There are definite signs that big increases aren't going to happen as the last couple of years have seen increase that pale in comparison to 2015 and earlier.

 

True a lot of "nobody's" are still downloading. But I think it's more about the trends. Digital sales have been decreasing at an increasingly larger rate.

I expect that it'll continue but it'll start to level off with slower decreases year on year. It'll probably be a viable alternative for quite a while I think.

 

How do you miss a payment?!?

 

See page 4, "Physical Products":

http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/RIAA-Year-End-2017-News-and-Notes.pdf

 

I think that if the price for new LPs keeps getting lower, sales will continue to remain steady or increase even more.

I have noticed a lot of good titles for under $15 on Amazon recently. Last night, I bought 180g copies of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures ($13) and Slint's Spiderland ($10!!!).

 

Someone should tell Warners that.

I really don''t see prices getting lower and you can't use Amazon has a barometer unless they're selling 80% of the vinyl records, which they may well be, I have no idea. But Amazon will price with little to no mark up at all and sometimes lower than cost during sales, etc. They also get discounts from labels as well. They also don't have good prices for lps all the time. Prices tend to fluctuate so it's not a "regular cost $15" sort of thing IMO.

 

But how would mastering to an improved DR standard diminish anything happening now?

 

Oh yeah, I totally get that. I saw the same JD title for $22 at a physical record store on Tuesday night and most of the other titles that I saw in-store were about $10 higher there than on Amazon.

 

If it caused the price of vinyl to increase, it might diminish sales. Most music buyers have never even heard of the DR standard.

 

...lose your job, sudden sharp increase
in medical expenses due to illness in the
family.... is it really that difficult to imagine
financial hardship ?

 

Then one wouldn't be buying physical product, would they?
And I have been preparing for financial hardship all of my life.
I have great medical insurance and have saved/invested for decades.
It's something you have to plan for, not just let it happen to you.

 

Schiit makes PCs now?!

 

I personally don't think streaming has anything to do with the sales of the physical formats (vinyl, cd's). Most people who stream don't generally buy albums to begin with - except for the few who will when they hear something they really like. Those who stream to get to know new music that they can purchase will usually go to Youtube, or something similar. The ''Spotify'' industry is basically tapping in on a ''radio'' market that would otherwise listen to music for free. Of course, there are exceptions - and there are a lot of us here who are.

 

No, but they'd still be able to listen to
physical music they had already
purchased. I'm happy for you that you are financially well-off and have good medical insurance. Millions of Americans however, are not as well off. The economic recession affected a lot of people.

 

Maybe. Let's not forget how incredibly small the vinyl totals are. Sgt Pepper 50th was the number one selling vinyl, and it moved only 72,000 units in the US. Basically, one football stadium's worth of people. And this was a "deluxe" 2 LP edition that had a higher price.

I think the people buying vinyl very much are, for the most part, willing to pay more for a unique sonic and packaging experience.