Vinyl Sales Outpace CD Sales!

[Ron Resnick]

Sarah Whitten
CNBC
July 13, 2021

"In the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold, outpacing CD volume of 18.9 million, according to MRC, an analytics firm that specializes in collecting data from the entertainment and music industries.

Vinyl has slowly been making a comeback in recent years. In 2020, vinyl trumped annual revenue of CDs in the U.S. for the first time in 34 years, the Recording Industry Association of America reported."

 

[Steve Williams]

probably because the silver disc is becoming obsolete and a thing of the past. Most people stream digital nowadays

 

[dcathro]

probably because the silver disc is becoming obsolete and a thing of the past. Most people stream digital nowadays

Although I only listen to CDs, I pretty much stopped buying them new around 20 years ago because of the remastering craze and loudness wars. Instead I look for early CD pressings second hand.

 

[microstrip]

probably because the silver disc is becoming obsolete and a thing of the past. Most people stream digital nowadays

Yes, considering the revenue numbers, streaming outsold CD or vinyl by a factor of around 20 in 2020. Downloads revenue are comparable to CD or vinyl .

The vinyl resurgence is mostly a social consumption process, not an audiophile driven wave. People want the ritual - going to the shop, putting the LP on the turntable and lowering the stylus!

 

[astrotoy]

It is when tapes outsell CD's that we have to really worry about the silver discs. Larry

 

[PeterA]

The vinyl resurgence is mostly a social consumption process, not an audiophile driven wave. People want the ritual - going to the shop, putting the LP on the turntable and lowering the stylus!

“People want….” The hobby is driven by preference. People also make choices based on what they think sounds better. Streaming by most is for convenience. Audiophiles who don’t stream but like to put a CD in a drawer do it because they think it sounds better.

 

[rando]

You don't buy what you already own and for millions that is cd and cd players.

I think it's great everyone's kids are pulling their parents long buried in a closet TT out and making use of it to play enough of the never removed Crystal Gayle LP, for their own kids, they jointly realize what a downer the last two decades were musically.

 

[Addicted to hifi]

That’s no surprise to me but I still love my cds and it’s my first choice.

 

[Addicted to hifi]

Even in Australia we’re I live,vinyl is outselling cds.

 

[tima]

Sarah Whitten
CNBC
July 13, 2021

"In the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold, outpacing CD volume of 18.9 million, according to MRC, an analytics firm that specializes in collecting data from the entertainment and music industries.

Vinyl has slowly been making a comeback in recent years. In 2020, vinyl trumped annual revenue of CDs in the U.S. for the first time in 34 years, the Recording Industry Association of America reported."

Last November I opened my LP2.1 review with this:

"In the year 2002 the CD era was in full swing. CDs made up 93% of all recorded music sales—a huge slice of the pie. Vinyl record sales were 2/10ths of 1%. Into that vinyl-on-life-support environment Lamm Industries introduced their first phono preamplifier, the LP2.

Fast forward 17 years to 2019. Sales of all physical music media are down. From their lofty previous peak, sales of CDs—the "perfect sound forever" format—are now less than 6% of total recorded music sales. Vinyl sales rose from the near-dead to 4.5% of total sales. (Data from the RIAA. Used record sales not included.) The years 1973 through 2018 saw nearly $29 billion in new vinyl sales."

In 2020:

- the CD format accounted for $483.3 million in recorded music revenue. That was 4.0% of total revenue of $12.2 billion

- Vinyl accounted for $619.6 million in recorded music revenue. That was 5.1% of the total recorded music revenue. Vinyl sales outpaced CD in 2020

- Also surprising: Digital downloads fell 18% to $674 million or 6%.

The big dog in 2020 was paid subscriptions at $7.0 billion.

To put it in perspective:

US Music Revenue Database - RIAA

We’re crunching the numbers… RIAA is currently modernizing this recorded music database to reflect wholesale revenue reporting and introduce new features including: Updated historical figures to wholesale, allowing for global comparisons. More intuitive visuals and improved data download...

www.riaa.com

(note: The numbers on the pie chart do not match the RIAA text. tch tch editor)

Recent technology advances in record cleaning increase the viability of the vinyl medium; it's easier now to revive old records and preserve new ones.

If you want to be happy in life, clean your records!

 

[Phillyb]

Sarah Whitten
CNBC
July 13, 2021

"In the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold, outpacing CD volume of 18.9 million, according to MRC, an analytics firm that specializes in collecting data from the entertainment and music industries.

Vinyl has slowly been making a comeback in recent years. In 2020, vinyl trumped annual revenue of CDs in the U.S. for the first time in 34 years, the Recording Industry Association of America reported."

Streaming is king, 19.2 million LPs that much would have sold in a week back in the '60s and '70s. Both formats you mention are niche markets now compared to downloading and streaming music which is in the billions. CDs are still strong here and in Europe. The transition from CD to digital streaming was an evolution of the digital format. I grew up with vinyl and had a huge collection now I have a huge collection of CDs, so why would I want to start going back and collecting vinyl of the same titles I have on CD or for that matter rebuy them in a download. I continue to buy CDs and enjoy them in my music system, it all starts in the production quality regardless of format, they can sound good or crappy vinyl included. Revenue of LP's sales would be higher, they cost 2-4X more than a CD.

 

[microstrip]

“People want….” The hobby is driven by preference. People also make choices based on what they think sounds better. Streaming by most is for convenience. Audiophiles who don’t stream but like to put a CD in a drawer do it because they think it sounds better.

Peter,

What hobby are you addressing? The people buying the millions of current vinyl LP's , most digitally processed and pressed with poor quality care little about sound quality. Ask dealers about what type of equipment they own.

The unavoidable question - would we buy a typical non audiophile current pressing sold by millions? I played a few from friends in my turntable and they sounded average at best. Surely we have exceptions, I address the mainstream, where the millions are located.

And sorry, streaming can be high quality and is not just convenience anymore. Just ask the more than 120 owners of the Taiko server that participate in this forum. BTW, IMHO inconvenience and annoyance do not help sound quality, although it is known since long they can help creating expectation bias.

 

[Ron Resnick]

. . . inconvenience and annoyance do not help sound quality, although it is known since long they can help creating expectation bias.

 

[Phillyb]

We buy what we like, and let's be honest we follow trends, what is hip today, and another fact we Audiophiles are a blip on the map in sales of consumer audio/sale of physical media. Boomers are this hobby. CD has been put down for the last 10 years by the same folks who for 20 years reviewed systems and called the state of the Art using CD as their main source. So I give their opinions zero value. I never would have sold my vinyl collection if not having the opportunity to buy CDs of LP's that were long out of print, and the quality of the vinyl by then was the pit in quality, that is the one good thing about the invention of the CD, old catalogs were open back up for re-release where with the vinyl version they long been retired due to all that wanted them had purchased them. 2nd thing about how folks keep talking of CDs sounding like they did 30 years ago when the format was young, that be like saying vinyl and recordings sounded the same in the '50s as they in 1920.

I have CDs that kill my 1st pressing of the LP version I owned and then visa versa, this shows it not the format but the time put into making the recordings for release. Magzine saw the tread towards downloading music and much for free, and knew boomers to be resistant, so what did boomers grow on like me vinyl, then overnight the vinyl push began, and for young kids vinyl was different from what they grew up on and cool to own, I love vinyl but there no going back for me to just replace what I own or have owned that be nuts and a waste of money. And if you want to buy vinyl find the original pressing and not the ones released today if you want the sound of those recording as intended at the time.

I like to interact with my music so feeling touch and putting a disc on is enjoyable, I've downloaded a few titles I own and the CD sounded better, I've burned a CD on exact copy and again the CD sounded better, not matter FLAC or WAV. But I love having 1,200 songs on my USB to listen to in my car, no more XM/Sirus, I really don't need them. I can burn more and more songs in MP3 and the sound quality is better than the XM/Sirus. So there is benefits to burning music, I can be my own DJ...smile!

To end I have a huge family and extended family 150 or more, all ages, and not one was an audio system of any value, and the others use streaming, or their cell phone with buds, and those with an audio system that is older than dirt and not even the cost of a medium-priced power cord. So we Audiophiles are in a small group of our own and we are not mainstream. The Master Tape the best source to hear, Vinyl being superior is a myth, and then that depends on what arm, cartridge, table, mat, VTA, and tracking angle and who set up your table and how good they were, each of the above add colorations to the sound and changes the sound and that can be night and day. So like audio what is the sound you enjoy but it is never the master tape. Enjoy the music no matter the format which is better it is the one you enjoy!.

 

[PeterA]

Peter,

What hobby are you addressing? The people buying the millions of current vinyl LP's , most digitally processed and pressed with poor quality care little about sound quality. Ask dealers about what type of equipment they own.

The unavoidable question - would we buy a typical non audiophile current pressing sold by millions? I played a few from friends in my turntable and they sounded average at best. Surely we have exceptions, I address the mainstream, where the millions are located.

And sorry, streaming can be high quality and is not just convenience anymore. Just ask the more than 120 owners of the Taiko server that participate in this forum. BTW, IMHO inconvenience and annoyance do not help sound quality, although it is known since long they can help creating expectation bias.

I am addressing what we members here on WBF seem to be doing: making choices and discussing or defending them. Some even try to persuade others to follow. I understand the "millions" do something different and don't care for quality the same way we do. This is our hobby, others have others, and are quite happy with accessing latest pop music.

People also drive cars that go from A to B. Some then are more enthusiasts and make different choices. You are fond of saying that people make choices based on preferences. I agree. You wrote "People want..." That sums it up.

Some audiophiles hear no difference between the Taiko and other much less expensive streams, even iPhones. 120 owners seems to help create expectation bias, since long. Good thing there is demand for trying and reselling.

 

[Al M.]

That’s no surprise to me but I still love my cds and it’s my first choice.

Yup, here too. Funny that even with the decline of CD sales, about 95 % of the music that I want is still available new on CD from outlets like Amazon (the rest I can almost always get from Discogs or such). Therefore, I suspect that for some music genres, CD is still a premier medium on which labels sell their music (e.g., jazz, classical, modern avantgarde classical). Since total sales volumes of such music were never high to begin with (for example, classical typically used to be about 3 % of all music sales), CD sales from these types of music do not stem the overall tide of declining CD sales.

Of course the most popular music is now sold or distributed mainly by download/streaming, so the lack of distribution on CD for this music drives total CD sales way down.

I did notice that here and there some new music/recordings are not available on CD anymore, so that's a concern (and for some aspiring or niche artists their own digital download distribution apparently is the easiest). There will be a time, in a few years I suppose, where that tiny percentage will grow to an uncomfortable share of all music, and then I will have to invest in a file/streaming solution for my high end system, an investment I do not look forward to. Not just because of the price, but because good file replay/streaming, at least equivalent to good CD replay, is just so hard to achieve. I have witnessed this elsewhere over the years, but I also learned that it *CAN* be done (even without a Taiko Extreme ). Fortunately we are not quite anymore in the embarrassingly immature tinkery-tink child stages with which computer audio began, but we are not yet in the full grown-up adult stage either, where to me satisfying computer audio would reliably be just plug n' play. Thus far, the difference between typically synthetic, plasticky computer audio sound and great computer audio sound is still on a thin line which can easily be screwed up towards the dark side by just a tiny thing being off. Let's hope in a few years that the medium (finally, about time!!) has matured to the point where this is not of concern anymore.

In any case, yes, the times are a' changing. As they always are.

Sure, I already do streaming all the time, on YouTube over computer and headphones. But serious high end is a different matter.

 

[Phillyb]

Useless facts..smile!

How many CDs sold in 2020?
31.6 million CD albums

In 2020, 31.6 million CD albums were sold in the United States, accounting for less than 4 percent of music industry revenues.

How many records were sold in 2020?

In 2020, 27.5 million LPs were sold in the United States, up 46 percent compared to 2019 and more than 30-fold compared to 2006 when the vinyl comeback began. Jan 15, 2021
https://www.statista.com › lp-sales-in-the-united states

How many songs are downloaded each year?
How much music is pirated each year? The latest piracy statistics show that over 1.2 billion songs get illegally downloaded each year.

biggest physical medium in sales? As actual album sales go, Taylor Swift had no competition. “Folklore” was the only album of 2020 to top a million in full-album sales, finishing the year with 1.28 million copies sold. ( that is not even platinum level).

The news was not so great for digital music sales, as consumers continue to devalue ownership of their music when streaming is so handy. Global song sales were down 19.2% and the decline was even harsher in the U.S., with a decline of 22.3%, from 301 tracks sold to 234 million.

The number of digital music album downloads in the United States in 2020 amounted to 33.1 million, marking a drop of more than 50 percent from 2016. Over 100 million digital music albums were downloaded in the U.S. between 2011 and 2015, but the number then began to decrease annually and has failed to recover since.

The fact is streaming is king and by a far shot. It is in the billions, and due to that, even digital purchases of downloads of albums are going the wayside. Folks don't want to own media anymore, even DVD/Blu-Ray/4-K sales are way down and they look better than what you see on cable or streaming TV, folks just don't care, they want it fast and easy. Spotify and others are where people go to get their music. Why own it they say, we grew up as collectors of music, most people don't care anymore to do so. With high-end audio becoming more geared toward the upper 5% of wage earners its death is slow but surely coming, it is a boomer hobby.

Mid-Year-2020-RIAA-Revenue-Statistics.pdf

 

[XV-1]

Although I only listen to CDs, I pretty much stopped buying them new around 20 years ago because of the remastering craze and loudness wars. Instead I look for early CD pressings second hand.

You haven't bought new music for 20 years?

 

[sbo6]

If you are comparing physical media, sure digital is 98% migrated to streaming. The net is - 2020 U.S. vinyl sales were ~5% of total sales, the remaining 95% is essentially digital.

Another interesting stat - from 2019 to 2020 U.S. vinyl sales grew $140 Million while digital sales grew over $1 Billion.

With the continual proliferation of high quality digital services and millions of songs available at your fingertips for the price of a few Happy meals a month + ultra high quality digital servers, streamers and DACs at continually lower prices and higher quality it's only a matter of time before LPs go the way of the Edison cylinder. I get the draw to vinyl, it can sound great and, for us older folks, there's that un - kickable drug called nostalgia that draws you in. But technology moves on with higher quality, lower distortion, easier access and a better user experience at lower prices. Supply, demand and competition folks...

 

[Addicted to hifi]

I don’t like the idea of streaming and will spin lps and cds to the day I die.