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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
you can seriously pick them up anywhere from a few bucks, to a few bucks for a box full, to free sometimes.
When you want to buy music new on Amazon sometimes it's cheaper to buy the physical disk with "Auto-Rip" than it is to buy just the digital album.
Either way, I rip the disk to Ogg/Vorbis and keep it on my phone, and everything else I own. They still sound awesome, and unlike vinyl and tape media they still sound just as good today as the day the original owner bought them fifteen years ago even if they were played hundreds of times. (unless you bought from an ogre that didn't take care of them, then you can still sometimes run the polisher)
As far as I'm concerned buying a few used disks a month is cheaper than a bandwidth draining subscription service, and in time you'll have a better selection than they do anyways. Unless you like pop, in which case the cost and storage of your music isn't the first serious contemplation you need to make about your music.
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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.
CDs get lost, burn up in fires, get scratch, lots of things happen. streaming services generally are a much better way to preserve the files.
You think that right up until your streaming service of choice suddenly drops some music you listen to often. There is more music than you think that can drift in and out of music service coverage... this has happened to my wife before.
With a CD, as long as you can read it once you are golden. Just digitize it yourself - using a service like iTunes Match even means you can still listen to it even if it's not on the streaming service the company offers. (not sure what companies besides Apple offer something like iTunes Match).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley