NEWS: Music revenue in U.S. sees vinyl sales overtake CD

A quick survey of my listening habits reveals:

At home:
CD ~50%, Streaming ~30%, Vinyl ~10%, Downloads/rips ~10%

On the move:
CD ~50%, Downloads/rips ~50%

If I hadn't had a legacy vinyl collection from the 80's I'm not sure I would start one now.
However I still like the feeling of interacting with a physical object to select and play music and CDs allow that.
CD's are such good value now with sound quality as good as I need (or can hear :) )

I have fallen into the habit of exploring using streaming and then buying 2 or 3 of my favourite albums a year.
I definitely appreciate streaming for allowing me to avoid duds...
You know that record/CD you buy without listening because the artist's last album was great, listen to once or twice and then relegate to storage/charity shop...
I dread to think how many of those I bought in the 90's :)
 
Surprised but very happy to hear this.

If I didn't live in a shoe box of a house, I'd dig out my old Vinyl gear and start listening again.

Hopefully vinyl will stick around for another 20 years and i'll have more time (and god willing a bigger house) so I can listen again. No idea what the state of a lot of my old vinyl is in though. Been in my old mans loft (dry no damp) for the best part of 20 years.o_O
 
Well you can call me a Luddite but my listening is still 100% CD/SACD. You can keep your snap, crackle and pop for the breakfast table.;)
 
A quick survey of my listening habits reveals:

At home:
CD ~50%, Streaming ~30%, Vinyl ~10%, Downloads/rips ~10%

On the move:
CD ~50%, Downloads/rips ~50%

If I hadn't had a legacy vinyl collection from the 80's I'm not sure I would start one now.


Home listening for me has always been almost exclusively vinyl and on the move/at work almost exclusively downloads/rips. That's stayed the same, but now I'm working from home, I'd say 99% of my listening is there, rather than about 20% as it would have been in the past.

That means almost all of my listening is on vinyl now, and that has got expensive - expanding the collection and less time between stylus changes. I'm enjoying it very much though.

Like you, I don't think I'd start again with vinyl. I love the format, and it is amazing when you get an all analogue record that can't be equalled by any of the digital versions, but it takes up a lot of space, is expensive etc.

I've recently been buying more Jazz records and this is a genre where you really seem to get quite a lot of records which digital copies can't match, but I find that is much more rare with the other genres I listen to.
 
Interesting point made by John Darko about these stats. While the revenue from vinyl has overtaken CD revenue, the number of units purchased is still much lower.

Which means that you vinyl fans are being overcharged, and that CD is currently exceptional value.

I would say 80% of my listening is by Tidal nowadays, but if I come across an album that’s a real keeper (so it holds up well after several listens), then I’ll purchase the CD. That’s especially the case from lesser known artists whose albums could drop off streaming at some point in the future.

My remaining 20% listening tends to be primarily Bluray concerts and CD.

What did surprise me in Darko’s report was how downloads revenue is broadly similar to CD revenue. I thought downloads were dying more quickly than CD’s were, but again, maybe people are being overcharged per download? When there’s no packaging, export, distribution and retail store costs to take into consideration, downloads ought to be cheaper than CD.

So you could argue that downloads are a rip-off. (See what I did there?)
 
Spot on @Hoku this is about revenue, not units:

Vinyl 22.9m
CD 31.6m
Downloads 33.1m

All this means is the labels know vinyl buyers will pay more for the product, which is not necessarily a good thing for consumers!
 

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