CDs, vinyl are outselling digital downloads for the first time since 2011
That's a touch misleading. The sales of music on physical media are declining. They're just not declining as rapidly as digital downloads.
"The outlook for digital downloads is bleak. This is the third year in a row they’ve posted double-digit declines, according to the RIAA. And this is the first time since 2011 they’ve fallen behind physical music media. If the trend continues, they could wind up going the way of the eight-track tape, which was overtaken in the early 1980s by the cheaper and more compact cassette.
The situation isn’t very rosy for physical media either. CD shipments continued their years-long decline, falling 6 percent to $1.1 billion in 2017, according to the report."
Both physical media and digital downloads are getting crushed by subscription services.
Vinyl sales continue to increase by a fair percentage every year, though obviously from a still very low base.
ReplyDeleteApparently, in the U.S total album sales were 14.2 million in 2017 which is an approximately 10% increase from 2016. "In my day" in a good year, three or four artists could sell 14.2 million records alone.
The significant thing though is that the infrastructure to support vinyl is getting in place with at least a few new record stores opening and some record player manufacturers looking at ways to further improve sound.
My understanding though is that most of the albums sold are older records or from older artists and that most of the people buying vinyl are older. So, it's still far from certain there is a long term viable market here.
Finally, I'm not an expert on the technology by any means, but I would guess if it's technically possible that some company will come up with high quality analog sound for computers that rival vinyl records and record players.
After all, as Homer said "ohhh, they've got the internet on computers now."
Actually there won't be a push to make records sound better. They sound good enough now. The compression used on CDs increases the high and low ends to make it sound "better" for radio. So records have a much more natural sound. I can hear the difference on many records that I own. Not all, mind you, but many.
ReplyDeleteThere are already many record players with USB output so you can record them to your computer. So high quality recording is already there.
The big difference in lps today versus years ago have to do with the quality of the records themselves. Most records today are pressed on 180 gram vinyl which is heavier and thicker medium than many from yesteryear.
Thanks for that. I guess the one area I would disagree with, and this is probably me living in the past here is there is obviously a difference in the sound quality with an old K-Tel record player (I'm not sure if K-Tel actually made record players) and a high end record player/stereo system.
DeleteIn terms of the manufacturers, if not done already, the idea would be producing the sound from $1,000 or so record players/stereo systems of the 1970s onto much less expensive systems of today.
Personally I grew up listening to music on cassettes on my Walkman with headphones, so I wasn't all that familiar with the details of record players (I was given a cheap one that could play 45s and 33 1/3) and then a more expensive record player/stereo system.
My main knowledge of the difference of the quality of sound output comes from listening to a radio documentary that I heard a while back and from 'back in the day' a Josie and the Pussycats comic book story.
In that particular story, Alexandra who was the rich 'friend/enemy' of Josie and her Pussycats wanted to listen to, I believe, it was their recording. So, she told them, if I play you your recording on my expensive system, can I listen as well?
They agreed, but when Josie and her Pussycats tried listening on their simple record player, they were all like "it just doesn't sound the same, does it?"
My wife is a retro jazz singer with three CDs to her credit. We just brought out a best-of LP because it's what both older fans of that type of music and younger people who like the bachelor pad genre prefer. It's very high quality, 180-gram virgin vinyl and pressed on new, state-of-the-art record presses. Many of the plants that are trying to meet the demand for vinyl now are using old presses that have been around since the '80s. Those things alone can make a noticeable difference between today's vinyl LPs and the junk I used to get from US record labels back when I was the record librarian for a major radio syndicator. Worst of all were the MCA LPs with rainbow labels. They used recycled vinyl. Brand new, first pressing promo LPs would always come with concentric scuffs. I have a few that actually have little pieces of embedded shredded paper labels sticking up out of the record. And you wonder why people gladly switched to CDs?
ReplyDeleteReally sorry to hear about the rise of streaming, though. Unless someone finds a way to direct the money to the artists, that's going to spell the end of making music as anything other than a hobby for 99.99% of musicians (that's everyone but the tiny handful of big names churning out lowest common denominator dreck for the major labels). Nobody can make a living being paid a nickel or whatever for every million plays of a song. Fans have to wake up and realize that a recording is the culmination of many years of practice and dedication and many expensive hours in the studio. You can't expect indie musicians to lose money on every album and keep on making more for very long.
I agree, this isn't just a problem for musicians though. "Information should be free" is a problem for people throughout the creative arts whether it's musicians, those in film, or fiction/non fiction authors.
DeletePersonally, I'm constantly amazed at the amount and of quality of content that people willingly provide for free over the internet, but there is still no question that the axiom "you get what you pay for" still applies.
I hadn't read this story before, but being Canadian I had heard about the new vinyl recording manufacturing process as they are the inventors are Canadian:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wired.com/2017/02/warm-tone-record-press-hand-drawn-records/
I can't find the radio documentary I mentioned above. It was one from a business program on one of the public broadcasters either BBC, ABC (Australian) or Deutsche Welle (DW).
Well, music is an inherently analogue experience. This can be emulated digitally, but a friend of mine explained it to me as: you would have to sample at about twice the frequency CDs actually do in order to make it sound the same.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I can't hear every bat screech and owl belch. I probably couldn't tell the media apart if you put a blindfold on me. I guess I like albums because I grew up with them. Also, their shear size gives the artwork and lyrics more room to spread out. And try - just fucking try - to clean a half-ounce of weed on one of those little jewel cases.
I had to laugh though. I took my nine-year-old to B&N the other day and when I went to look at the albums, she asked me why I wanted to buy a calendar in March.
Far as the artists making money, the Minutemen had the best attitude: just think of the album as an ad for your next gig.