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Capitalism: Vinyl LPs overtake CDs in sales
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Revenues from physical products of $376 million at estimated retail value for first half 2020 were down 23% year-over-year. There was a significant impact from music retail and venue shutdown measures around Covid-19, as Q1 2020 declines were significantly less than Q2 compared with their respective periods the year prior. Revenues from vinyl albums increased in Q1, but decreased in Q2, resulting in a net overall increase of 4% for 1H 2020. Vinyl album revenues of $232 million were 62% of total physical revenues, marking the first time vinyl exceeded CDs for such a period since the 1980’s, though it still only accounted for 4% of total music recorded music revenues.

    https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Mid-Year-2020-RIAA-Revenue-Statistics.pdf

  • 11 Replies sorted by
  • balldawg14balldawg14

    It is a bad joke as most new vinyl sounds much worse than CD with bad manufacturing and many defects and such. Yet price keeps going up and are now to new level of exploitation.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @balldawg14

    Sound quality alone is not something that makes such sales.

    Size of the vinyl album also matter, sometimes it comes with nice art and some extras.

    If you want good sound quality of some common music can just ask your smart speaker.

  • robertGLrobertGL

    I bought over 2000 classical and jazz cds off ebay for about 250 dollars. Not a bad deal but transferring them to FLAC is a real pain

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @robertGL

    You should discover nice music torrent places instead :-)

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    In the UK, vinyl record sales have been growing for several years. The industry association BPI said the growth has been for 13 consecutive years.

    In 2020, 4.8 million records were sold. This is almost 10% more than in 2019. In 2016, just over 3 million records were sold. According to the association, sales were not as big as they are now, "from the very beginning of the nineties." Records account for 18% of music album sales. This segment generates twice as much revenue for the industry as music video streaming platforms such as YouTube.

  • robertGLrobertGL

    Thanks to parents I have a bunch of vinyls but no real way to play them. I need to sell them off to all the vinyl lovers of the world; I prefer PCM anyway.. I hope to have a nice hifi setup eventually

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Total revenues from physical products were essentially flat, at $1.1 billion (down 0.5%) despite the challenges to retail from the pandemic. But vinyl sales grew 28.7% year-over-year to $626 million. Revenues from CDs dropped a whopping 23% to $483 million, continuing a long-term decline.

  • hardimpacthardimpact

    i wrote a template that re-creates pleasing vinyl harmonic distortion sounds from standard music. they should make it into an audio circuit chip so we can keep our digital music cake and eat it too. how you gonna play vinyl in your car?

  • hinihini

    @hardimpact No problem. See https://thevinylfactory.com/news/amazing-photos-of-a-time-when-cars-had-record-players/

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @robertGL

    Highly recommend used Energy RC speakers (best sound in affordable price range, most long made speaker without changes I know).

    For amp you can use any modern digital one, many have superb USB inputs, bluetooth even.

    Also can check - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/21001/energy-veritas-2.2-speakers-for-lifetime/p1 in US they (and floor speakers) appear used for nice prices. They are extremely heavy and best constructed speaker I saw. But it is little more analytical sound, ala Monitor Audio style (Gold and up).

    Also suggest to look for voice assistants with output (preferably digital) as it is nice to have if you are lazy sometimes, just can ask for some music outside your collection and it plays on your good main speakers.

  • halfmachalfmac

    I gave up on vinyl 25 years ago. Always hated the clicks and pops and fast wear on disk. I had a high end turntable and Grado cartage. I had less than fifty albums. I had lots of cassettes and reel tapes. When CD's came along I was very happy with the sound, easy of use and durability. I have converted a lot to mp3 and AAC.

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