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More People Bought Physical CDs and Vinyl Than Songs on iTunes Last Year (bgr.com)
An anonymous reader quotes BGR:
Sales from individual song downloads have unsurprisingly been falling with no end in sight, thanks to the convenience of streaming options like Spotify and Apple Music. A new report, though, makes clear just how few people there are these days who will buy individual digital songs -- there are so few of them, in fact, that they were outnumbered in 2018 by people who went old-school and bought actual compact discs and vinyl records.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, total download sales in 2018 -- for which iTunes led the pack -- dropped almost 30%, to a little more than $1 billion. Purchases of full album downloads likewise fell, by 25%. To put that in context, download sales represented more than 40% of the music industry's revenue back in 2013. Last year? About 11%.
Meanwhile, that drop in sales has resulted in a lop-sided reality that harkens back to the pre-iTunes days. Sales of physical media including CDs and vinyl, according to the RIAA's new report, were down 23 percent but totaled $1.15 billion, thus edging out digital download sales. Another interesting takeaway from the new report: Music fans bought almost $420 million worth of vinyl in 2018, which Cult of Mac notes in a piece today is almost as much as people spent buying album downloads from iTunes last year.
The RIAA reports that "virtually all the revenue growth" for 2018 came from streaming music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal, which last year collectively added 1 million new subscribers every single month, and now have a record number of more than 50 million subscribers.
"By the way, don't be fooled into reading something positive about CDs from the title of this post," adds BGR. "While physical media sales were down 23%, CD sales themselves slipped 34% for the year to $698 million. That's the first time CD yearly revenue has come in below $1 billion since 1986."
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, total download sales in 2018 -- for which iTunes led the pack -- dropped almost 30%, to a little more than $1 billion. Purchases of full album downloads likewise fell, by 25%. To put that in context, download sales represented more than 40% of the music industry's revenue back in 2013. Last year? About 11%.
Meanwhile, that drop in sales has resulted in a lop-sided reality that harkens back to the pre-iTunes days. Sales of physical media including CDs and vinyl, according to the RIAA's new report, were down 23 percent but totaled $1.15 billion, thus edging out digital download sales. Another interesting takeaway from the new report: Music fans bought almost $420 million worth of vinyl in 2018, which Cult of Mac notes in a piece today is almost as much as people spent buying album downloads from iTunes last year.
The RIAA reports that "virtually all the revenue growth" for 2018 came from streaming music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal, which last year collectively added 1 million new subscribers every single month, and now have a record number of more than 50 million subscribers.
"By the way, don't be fooled into reading something positive about CDs from the title of this post," adds BGR. "While physical media sales were down 23%, CD sales themselves slipped 34% for the year to $698 million. That's the first time CD yearly revenue has come in below $1 billion since 1986."
If I love a piece of music enough that want to preserve it in my library, I want a CD for backup, even if most times I listen to it as bits on a device
I trust my backup abilities way more than I trust the cloud or streaming services
Because I only pay for that song once. I can listen to it for the next 50 years without paying anything more, and it can't be "discontinued".
I have vinyl going back 70+ years. It was paid for once, and generations of our family can still listen to it.
If you want to rent your music and have its availability subject to the whims of someone else, that's your choice. Some of us, however, prefer ownership.
But a record, ahhh... that's tangible. Feel it. Smell it. The smell of library. The smell of history. The smell of many rounds of weed cleaned with licenses on the folds of an LP cover.
Run the Hunt EDA carbon fiber along the surface.
Brush off the dust bunnies off the stylus.
Hear the ker-thunk *plop* as the stylus settles into the groove.
Watch the the filaments in the KT-88 power tubes run their cheerful cherry orange. Ditty for the 12AX7s in the preamp. Smell it. Dust on hot glass.
Amaze yourself at the total lack of snap-crackle-pop, because you have a real turntable, not some made-in-china massmarket unit. No, you're running something German, from the mid-70's. When vinyl was the only game, really.
Streaming for convenience. Physical, tangible, for the foreverness.
I'm going to say this very carefully, very deliberately: Fuck... this modern world and its 100% fakeness. Fuck it long and hard, dry, with a very splintered phone pole.
There's *nothing* like that which you can hold, and store, and cherish, and long for, lust for. Fuck this fake digital modern world.
But truly, nothing beats the sheet music in front of you, with your barely-able fingers poised over the ebonies and ivories.
Fuck this modern world and those who worship at its altar.
There's still room for the old ways.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.