US Vinyl sales surpass CD sales for the first time in decades

  Quote

Vinyl album revenues comprised 62 percent of total physical revenues in the first half of this year.

Resident Advisor (actual RIAA report, PDF).

both suck

I'm shocked people are still buying CDs

I should've posted this as stupid first world problems you're dealing with.

Nah, it's kinda significant. A tipping point if you will.

The fact that people still buy vinyl...

lets see peoples hot takes on vinyl and physical media!

  On 9/11/2020 at 7:16 PM, species8472 said:

lets see peoples hot takes on vinyl and physical media!

Well, since you said so...

Tape is kinda cool, tho

its tiring hearing arguments from either side to be honest. spend your money on whatever the fuck you want.

from the environmental perspective - vinyl and cds are the least of our problems.

I feel like I've seen this headline or some variation thereof at least once a year for the past five years.

Also CDs rule, meet me in the alleyway after school if you disagree.

Is take CD's over vinyl any day

I wonder how many of those sales are collectors, who don't actually listen to the vinyl records, but instead just put them on display or in a box somewhere...

And probably 10 years from now CDs will make a comeback as a quaint format from a bygone era...

I don't think CDs will make much of a comeback. They by nature degrade over time quickly. A 10 year old disc might have already lost some of the material that's saved on it or have glitches etc.. CDs are a very bad medium in terms of longevity, more so than vinyl, and also look kinda ugly to be honest (but that perception might vary depending on who you are and in what time you live, lol). Vinyl on the other hand is expensive, takes up a lot of space, requires a specialised record player and the material is toxic. I know, there are many people who have handled a lot of vinyl all life long and became very old. But who knows, maybe they'd have been able to squeeze out another 2 years without the toxic contamination of the vinyl fumes. But even if you don't care about that, what actually is the benefit of it? Vinyl obsession is kinda silly. I'm not saying you aren't allowed to enjoy silly things. A lot of the things I enjoy make no sense and are silly. So why not just admit it's silly instead of acting as if it sounds better than other mediums etc.? Vinyl is extremely silly. Admit it.

Collecting is by definition a bit silly, because it's a choice, and a completely arbitrary one at that. It's at the top of Maslow's hierarchy (self-actualization/self-fulfillment needs), although it can bleed over to psychological needs and not always in a positive way. Even vinyl might not be about vinyl per se, it could be about music that's from a period from which only vinyl is available, so the medium is circumstantial. I know you're being, well, silly, but I have this assburger thing and go all literal-minded on everything.

Most, if not all of us are here because we're being silly in a communal, shared context. Some even seem to enjoy it.

I download the best quality I can. But my stereo is pure luxury. That is where the sound starts. I have a valve amp and speakers made for that amp.

An Album is great for the artwork. It's like buying a book or painting

  On 9/12/2020 at 2:09 AM, marf said:

I have a valve amp and speakers made for that amp.

Now THIS is even more silly than vinyl and cd together  

we are getting our fuzzy signals crossed. 

What I have is 

dynaco st-70

dynaco a25 speakers

I use raw wire connection

Cost about $1200 usd, altogether

  On 9/12/2020 at 12:18 AM, dcom said:

Collecting is by definition a bit silly, because it's a choice, and a completely arbitrary one at that. It's at the top of Maslow's hierarchy (self-actualization/self-fulfillment needs)

Collecting is silly

But far less silly than Maslow

  On 9/12/2020 at 3:06 AM, TubularCorporation said:

But far less silly than Maslow

See what I did there?

So, anyway... Is it just the sale of CDs plummeting thanks to streaming and vinyl keeping a steady level, or did sales rise?

Nevermind, read report in OP. CD sales dropped like a stone while collectors keep collecting, no increase.

I've never had a CD degrade or glitch due to age, and ive been buying CDs since the mid 90s. The only time I've had failures is through scratching or when i left a pile of them in my car one hot weekend and they melted / warped.

There is a myriad of exciting and interesting music that's digitally only available on CD, because the labels are dead and there will never be official releases in digital for different reasons, obvious example being RePHLeX, GPR another - and there's plenty of others, too. I was exclusively a vinyl for nearly 30 years, buying and playing digital are relatively new things for me, but I've noticed very acutely during the past few years that there's a lot of music that's not available as digital files unless I hunt for the CDs and rip the music myself. Personally I don't see CDs becoming a dead medium; out of my physical record collection of nearly 7200 items about 1000 or so are CDs, and none of them have degraded in any way.

People are sending less and less postcards and letters, yet stamp collecting persists. People are using less and less physical money, but coin collecting persists. Digital music has overtaken all physical formats, streaming has overtaken buying albums and singles... etc. But when you collect something, also the history of that something becomes relevant, and to understand the history, the chronology, the progression, the changes, the big events, the bifurcations in substance and style, you need to get your hands on primary source material. With music, that means vinyl and CDs. Alongside new vinyl, new CDs will be pressed because there is a lot of us who like handling physical items, something that becomes our own due to how the physical world works - the cover art and the liner notes, packaging etc. is part of the whole - downloading files and editing crappy metadata becomes bloody boring pretty quickly.

But, YMMV - consumers and connoisseurs are very different animals.

Different countries have very different consumption habits. In Japan, CD has never been overtaken as the most popular format. Last year in the UK, the only format the sold less than vinyl was cassette. The US seems to have abandoned CD a lot faster than other countries. COVID has definitely hit CD sales dramatically, because they are more commonly bought by casual listeners than vinyl.

I've gone for 'digital only' a couple of times, once out of choice, once out of necessity. Both times dramatically affected my listening habits, and I enjoyed music considerably less as a result. Fundamentally, I listen to a lot of music by browsing my shelves and seeing what leaps out at me. I find browsing on my computer just much more difficult. So I continue to buy CDs. 

CD degradation is something I see mentioned occasionally, but the only actual evidence I come across is either in the form of CDrs or the small percentage of releases from the late '80s and early '90s that suffer with disc rot (early Warp among them).

  On 9/11/2020 at 6:38 PM, Gocab said:

I'm shocked people are still buying CDs

I still buy CDs.  I know longer play CDs, but I still buy them.  Partly habit, partly as collectible, mostly has a hard copy backup in case I have a catastrophic, multi-harddrive failure, or at least so I tell myself.

I quit buying vinyl a very long time ago and have never felt a need to go back.  Fond memories but absolutely no burning desire to fiddle with such a fragile, fickle and non-mobile format.