Vinyl Records Set To Outpace CD Sales For The First Time In 30 Years, Even Though They Suck

Via ZeroHedge

While streaming content has displaced all forms of physical media as the preferred medium for sonic consumption, nostalgia-driven audiophiles have driven Vinyl sales through the roof – at least compared to CDs.

According to the RIAA’s 2019 mid-year revenue report published by Rolling StoneLPs are on pace to outsell CDs this year, making them the most profitable form of non-streaming music for the first time since 1986.

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. –Rolling Stone

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VINYL IS BACK

I knew I shouldn’t have given all my albums to the kids to hang on their walls as examples of ancient music listening artifacts. I bet none of you monkeys had a 3 in 1 Sears stereo system. Records, cassettes and 8 Tracks in one fantastic unit.

 

While the whole world is talking about Spotify, Pandora, iTunes and other digital music services, a long-forgotten medium has come back from near-extinction: the LP. In 2013, 6.1 million vinyl albums were sold in the United States, up from less than a million in 2005 and 2006. The same trend can be observed in the UK and in Germany, where LP sales have climbed to the highest levels since the early 1990s. Global vinyl sales amounted to $218 million in the past year and it’s all but certain that the vinyl comeback will continue in 2014.

There are several possible reasons for the sudden resurgence of the LP. Music aficionados have always valued the warm, organic sound of vinyl recordings but it may actually be the rise of digital music that contributed most to the uptick in vinyl sales: as great as services such as Spotify are in making music accessible, they also commoditized music to a certain degree and took away the pleasure of owning a physical album. To those who still prefer to own a tangible product, an LP may just add a little more value than a CD does (CD sales have been crushed lately). Plus, as many labels ship vinyl records with download codes, buyers get the best of both worlds when they purchase a vinyl album – they get the convenience of an MP3 download alongside the physical and acoustic pleasures of an LP.

It should probably be noted that vinyl sales still account for a small fraction of overall music revenues, but it’s nice to see that there’s still some life left in a medium that has been around for so many decades.

Infographic: Vinyl Comes Back From Near-Extinction | Statista

You will find more statistics at Statista