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CDs, Vinyl Are Outselling Digital Downloads For the First Time Since 2011 (mercurynews.com)
Digital downloads had a short run as the top-selling format in the music industry. It took until 2011, a decade after the original iPod came out, for their sales surpass those of CDs and vinyl records, and they were overtaken by music streaming services just a few years later. Now, digital downloads are once again being outsold by CDs and vinyl, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. From a report: The RIAA released its 2017 year-end revenue report on Thursday, showing that revenue from digital downloads plummeted 25 percent to $1.3 billion over the previous year. Revenue from physical products, by contrast, fell just 4 percent to $1.5 billion. Overall, the music industry grew for a second year straight. And with $8.7 billion in total revenue, it's healthier than it has been since 2008, according to the report. Nearly all of the growth was the result of the continued surge in paid music subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music. Those services grew by more than 50 percent to $5.7 billion last year and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the industry's revenue. Physical media accounted for 17 percent, while digital downloads made up just 15 percent.
I've been buying CDs and never opening them when the CD version is cheaper or the same price as than the streaming version due to Amazon offering "AutoRip" on many CDs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Between "all-you-can-listen" streaming services and CDs/vinyls coming with free downloads with purchase of the disc, there's very little reason to buy digital tracks anymore. Not to mention they're counting total revenue, and most vinyls are at least $25-$30 minimum these days, compared to $10-$15 for CDs and $1 per track from most digital download stores.
66% is music services
the fact that downloads are separate and of the same order as CD or Vinyl is rather irrelevant, the main way of getting music is through the internet and physical media is dying.
read the summary again, music services are exploding, taking away share from physical and "downloads"
I'm guessing that it's not that CD/vinyl sales are up but that digital is down.
You're guessing? I'm not asking you to RTFA, but at least peruse TFS.
Boo hoo, RIAA. So, it hasn't been even this high since 2008? And streaming/downloads only makes up $1.3B of that? Unreal. It's a mere 1/8th of your total revenue stream. That's not news, it's just bragging that your portfolio shifted around and you're making more, but in different areas. If I had to guess, I'd fall into the same thought processes as others and say it's the Amazon-like approach of selling an 'pre-ripped' album that also comes with the tangible CD/Vinyl, too, albeit for a slight markup more --- and it makes sense for some because you get it encoded for none of your time and it's instant use. Then your second surprise shows up in the mail a few days later you never open and shelf as a nostalgic backup.
This is like the NFL complaining about how 'viewership' is down this here for baseless excuses and is really impacting their product, but still manage to increase their entire network every year.
I'm surprised to see that "CD/Vinyl" is the excuse vs. pirating. Never see a witch-hunt for that as long as it's making you something.
This isn't going to apply to all new releases but most of what I buy comes with a download link. I can buy the nice gatefold vinyl with all the cool artwork and it will have a download code inside so I can get my FLACs at no additional cost. It's the best of both worlds. CDs ordered through bandcamp often come with an immediate download link on purchase too. The included download may have been a large contributing factor to physical sales dominance.
So for $120/Year you can play all the music you want.... The average CD cost about $10, so that's like buying 12 CDs a year....... However, MOST people listen to a few dozen artists or a few songs they'll want to listen to over and over again, and before the advent of streaming services might have purchased 2 or 3 CDs per year.... ~$20 or $30/Year in music tops.
So let me get this straight... the avg. subscriber will now pay 6 TIMES as much per year to listen to probably roughly the same amount of music, AND better yet.... after the year is over, you don't own anything for having subscribed, so next year you gotta pay again to listen to the same music.
The music companies should be THRILLED by this model. All they have to do is raise CD prices even more to ensure they become less popular and get a tighter lockdown on "higher fidelity versions" they can upsell later, then make sure they eventually get an 80% or 90% cut on all subscription services, and keep renegotiating royalty rates a few % higher every year to provide growth.
'Streaming' is shit. Why can't you all see that the Corporate world is trying to move everything in our lives to a 'rental' model? Do you really want to live in a world where you can't own anything yourself? Rich get richer, poor get poorer.
What's really going on is the music sellers are moving to the cable company model where they will not let you cherry pick the songs you want to buy and they will boil your frog-like ass for years until you are paying $100 per month for music.
Are any of you cord cutters feeling the heat yet? I thought not, you stupid frogs.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Well, were I to want to acquire music, I'd prefer a CD because downloads too often die for one reason or another. (E.g., I wipe the partition that they were downloaded into.)
OTOH, due to the RIAA legal practices, I've stopped acquiring music. Since I have many old CDs, I find that I don't miss it. (Interestingly, I don't listen to most of the ones I own. Only about 20.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That is definitely wrong. I know people in two bands, and both make money by selling CDs at concerts.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is all because of Music as a service. We recently found an album that we wanted on CD. We thought, "hey let's buy that on Amazon/iTunes." Nope, only available with a subscription.
I subscribe to Apple Music. Which has been nice for selection and so on...
But recently I wanted to actually buy a song. Even though it was also available "for free", to support the artist beyond the pittance he would earn through my streaming the song.
How to do so? I still have no idea, I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to get to a real purchase page before I gave up.
You have to think that streaming is killing sales in general though...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
TFA is at the Mercury News web site, and credits Derek Hawkins at the Washington Post. But TFA says its source is a Medium post by the RIAA's Cary Sherman, and sure enough if you go to the RIAA's web site you can find a post with a link to the Medium post as well as to the RIAA's actual report: https://www.riaa.com/riaa-rele...
ProTip for submitters and editors: if TFA has a source, the source may well be on the web too, and may have real actual data.
I haven't bought an MP3 in years but I still buy CDs from time to time.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The numbers show the record companies got less MONEY from digital than from physical products, not that people listened to fewer songs. Downloads and streaming let the consumer get more music for little money.
If you want FREE music there are millions and millions of songs on MySpace, free. 15 million people post their creations on myspace. If you want professionally produced, highly polished music and you want what the record companies pick out for you, contributing your $1 to the cost of that is not only the best right thing to do, it also supports the artists (musicians and composers, producers, mix engineers, etc) so they can continue to produce the music you love.
Some people say they don't see value in talent scouts finding artists, they'd be happy browsing through the 15 million artists on MySpace. They don't see value in the half million dollars of production that goes into a typical major-label album. Cool. If you don't want that, MySpace has millions of songs produced in someone's basement.
If you DO want to listen to songs that have been through a year of production to make the sound perfect, grab four quarters off your night stand and toss your buck in the hat that pays for all that.
Look, I support the artists, not the music industry.
I buy my LPs and CDs (and DVDs) direct from the artists at performances, where they get 50 percent of the take, not via Amazon or some digital intermediary who takes 99 percent of the cash and maybe, if they feel like it, gives the artists less than 1 percent.
Oh, check out Giants in the Trees and Golden Gardens, they are excellent!
I'll be buying more at performances like UpStream this summer.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
eh, I think 1 CD per month at least is more usual given my collection size I mostly stopped adding to about 15 years ago.
I want to live in a world where I can stream music via a phone sized device instead of lugging around hundreds of CDs. I want to live in a world where I can read what I want off of an eReader instead of devoting hundreds of square feet of my home to bookshelves and books. I want to live in a world where I can stream content to my TV instead of managing a DVD/BluRay/whatever-else-is-next collection. I get that other people like owning physical media. I used to be that way but personally I had unhealthy habits where collecting looked a lot more like hoarding. So instead of spending hundreds of dollars on media these days I spend about $50-$60 with music streaming, Kindle Unlimited, and whatever TV streaming I'm doing that month. And my house is clean. And my entire collection can for the most part come with me wherever I go. And I miss some things sometimes, but overall I'm a lot happier and I spend a lot less money per month on this type of entertainment. I own plenty of things myself. Music, movies, and television just aren't in that classification anymore.
For a lot of people, it may be a bad thing to use streaming instead of purchases. For many - including myself - it's a godsend. I have over 3000 CDs/albums I purchased prior to 2012 (the last time I bought an album); now for just $20/month I have redbook-or-better audio, for 46+ million tracks, and I can listen to it any time, any where, via my cell phone. I use Tidal and Pandora. I use Pandora to explore new genres, and when something catches my ear I can go and download it and decide if I like the entire thing. Having literally millions of albums available to me with a few clicks is huge - I love music. If I hadn't invested that ~$50K into my physical music library, I could pay for multiple lifetimes of downloads...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Removing digital music due to the cover art and lyrics for political reasons?
With physical copies that music is safe with the person who enjoys music.
Safe from brands and political SJW who feel they can ban digital music.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
1) Better, uncompressed quality on CD.
2) No DRM crap to block access to the recording, its safely and durably stamped onto disc permanently and playable on any non internet connected CD player.
CDs are sort of becoming a nostalgia item, hearkening back to the pre internet days, the era of fancy hi-fi systems and CD players with fancy controls and LCD readouts, while remaining the most practical and best quality format available, surpassing the durability of other nostalgia platforms such as Vinyl .
Clearly, CD wins hands down. Super CDs are better, yet a premium item it seems, its difficult to find anything on a SACD, epsecially tasteful music for instance orchestra or jazz music, at least for a reasonable price.
'Streaming' is shit. Why can't you all see that the Corporate world is trying to move everything in our lives to a 'rental' model? Do you really want to live in a world where you can't own anything yourself? Rich get richer, poor get poorer.
Well it's entertainment, most the value is in watching it once so the smart people would probably buy a second hand DVD, watch the movie, and sell it again for essentially the same price. That's in essence how Netflix got started, let's just pass around the same disc as quickly as possible. The movie studios made great money on those who bought the disc, watched it then put in on the shelf because of a pack rat mentality or the idea that maybe some day I'll want to see it again. I have a shelf full to prove that, they're mostly collecting dust.
With streaming I don't need to consider the future value or the resale value, it's simply whether my desire to watch it here and now is bigger than the cost. If I want to watch it again in 10 years, it's probably on some bargain bin service where streaming + bargain bin < buying the disc anyway. It's not like my copy is first edition or signed or anything. And there's very little reason for something on a streaming service to go "out of print", yes it can disappear from one service but it usually means it's now on some other service that paid more. It's not rescuing Doctor Who episodes...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's nice. And if the 'service' goes out of business, or there is some sort of Rights dispute with the content creator -- or your 'service' just decides that you don't have anything anymore, even if you paid for it -- then it's gone, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. Also, enjoy knowing that ALL of your reading, listening, and viewing habits are now logged and surveiled: they know what you're doing, when you're doing it, and for how long. How does that make you feel, Hal? Loved? Or creeped out? When you own your own media, it's yours; someone would have to come to your house and physically take it from you. When you read a book, or watch a DVD/Bluray, or listen to a CD, it's nobody's business that you're doing that, and your privacy is intact. That's why owning physical copies of things is superior: they can't take it from you (or alter it after you buy it), and you use your media in privacy, and nobody has the right to know what you're reading/hearing/viewing.
..oh, and before you go off on a rant about how you think 'privacy doesn't matter', or 'I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to fear', or 'people who want privacy must have something to hide', or 'people who think their privacy is being invaded are paranoid', or anything like that? I have no respect whatsoever for people who think that way, I think they're stupid to the extreme, and are giving away something that is beyond price, for free, to people and corporations and governments who do NOT have your best interests at heart, and I have no interest in having a conversation with people like that -- so if you're one of those, don't bother responding, I don't want to talk to you.
Cars with drivers, and horses, combined, are outselling self-driving cars.
How much of the "CDs and vinyl are outselling" is CDs and how much is vinyl? I suspect it isn't 50/50.
Ok, well the thing is not all people are exactly the same, and there is something to be said to
occasionally buying buying a month of a streaming service to allow easy exploration of a large number of albums without buying them.
But buying music and obtaining permanent ownership seems to have the long-term major cost advantage.
I have over 3000 CDs/albums I purchased prior to 2012 ....
Having literally millions of albums available to me with a few clicks is huge
Found the addict. Even after building a massive 3000 CD collection, you would still be acquiring multiple CDs' worth a month?
Well, there are a few things to keep in mind here... (1) In spite of "millions" of tracks; I have Albums with songs that are not available available on CD, and i've CDs that are not available on any streaming service i've found --- so the ultimate music lover essentially has to buy both, if they want to not miss out on some music; I have no doubt that a streaming service provides quicker exploration and a larger fill for a true music addict ------ Versus the average person who buys a few CDs a year by default, and the streaming services are ultimately costly despite the "instant gratification" they offerd.
(2) It's actually physically impossible to not miss out on some music --- nobody can possibly listen to millions of albums in a year. If it takes one ~60 seconds to lookup an album, the most you could possibly view and consider playing in a year's time would be 525,600 if you spent 24x7x365 looking for albums; and if you spent 8 hours a day 365 days listening to songs assuming no repeats, gaps, or rest time --- the maximum number of 3 minute songs that can be fit in that time frame would be 58,400 songs; that's about 5.8% of 1 million. In other words, you'd need 17 years to consume what you're renting each year --- if you pay a whole year for such service.
I have mainly bought CDs for years because I didn't trust online sources not to delete my media if all I have is a digital copy. Yep, iTunes has done that. You get to download only once and if you change players, so sorry you don't have the songs you paid for any more. Amazon seems more reliable but for music I want to keep, I get a physical copy.
NRRPT/RCT
Vinyl is absolutely not equal to 12-bit lossless. There is wow/flutter, frequency response and pops/ticks to consider as well.
Youtube has none of that.
Eat the rich.
How many people do you know who only buy 2-3 CDs per year? That's how many I used to buy every month, on average.
Sure, there are some people out there who only buy one or two "greatest hits" albums once in a blue moon, but those people are sad and boring.
Eat the rich.
Out of ~20,000 tracks in my collection (all ripped from CDs or paid downloads from sites like Bandcamp), I found that ~1,500 were not available on Spotify. Most of these are independent self-published artists, rare remix albums and obscure local music that has probably sold less than 1000 albums in total between them. The majority of that stuff I wouldn't expect to find on any streaming service, to be honest.
I was (and am) generally satisfied with my collection, it's full of stuff I really like. Most of it is available on Spotify, but it also gives me access to music I probably wouldn't add to my collection, but still like to listen to once in a while, like Ozzy's solo albums or some song I couldn't get out of my head. Spotify lets me look up and listen to that music just as easily as I play my favorite albums, and that's hugely convenient to me, also if I'm having friends over and there's a specific song we want to listen to, but it's not in my offline collection.
I pay $10/month for the convenience, and I still keep my very favorite albums offline, just in case.
Eat the rich.
No one is preventing you from buying music. Are there any albums out there that are streaming-only, with no option to download or buy a physical copy? No?
Then stop whining, and don't subscribe to a streaming service if you don't want to.
Eat the rich.
You know it's possible to differentiate and only subscribe to some things, for the convenience, right? It's not all-or-nothing.
Subscribing to a streaming service is no different to using the library. They can also remove books from their shelves for whichever reason, and they track which content you check out. But the existence of a library does not prevent you from buying books yourself.
Streaming is a library of music. It's curated and has a gigantic selection. Will there sometimes be issues or missing content? Yes, that is simply how it has always been, for all libraries.
I have made the choice that I like having a subscription to a streaming service. It has a gigantic library, well-implemented search and very good automated recommendations. It is hugely convenient for a music lover like me.
Do I also keep an offline backed-up library of all my favorite music I've bought and ripped/downloaded myself? Hell yes, because I may want to cancel my subscription at some point, or move to a different streaming service with different coverage. Or I might be offline for a long period of time, and I would like to have local copies.
Eat the rich.
Exactly! To most people, music is ephemeral. They don't feel the need to build up a collection, they just want to hear the newest music easily. To them, streaming is more like a radio where you get to choose the playlist. They don't linger on specific albums, they just want the radio hits.
Eat the rich.
That's good. I love brutal slamming death metal, and I want more of it.
Eat the rich.