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CDs, Vinyl Are Outselling Digital Downloads For the First Time Since 2011 (mercurynews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the back-from-the-dead dept.

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.

5 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Amazon autorip by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Amazon autorip by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's cheaper just to rip them from YouTube. It's not like digital is less popular. You can't count this sort of thing just by sales, lol.

      Geez...does NO one care about fidelity at all anymore?!?!?

      Or, is that most modern music is so badly composed, performed and so compressed, that it isn't worth it to buy a good copy and play it on a really nice stereo system?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:Amazon autorip by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Funny

      As long as I can drink rum and have a parrot, I don't care what you call it.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    3. Re:Amazon autorip by VernonNemitz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Owning legal copies of music is cheaper in the long run than paying over and over again for streaming it. And one debacle after another, in the digital-music-storage industry, has made it clear that that type of ownership is not as trustworthy as owning hard copies like CDs or vinyl.

  2. Re:Misinformation as usual from the RIAA by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Insightful

    '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.