Rolling Stone:
As streaming gives the music industry its biggest profits in a decade, the CD business continues to plunge. CD sales have fallen 80 percent in the past decade, from roughly 450 million to 89 million.
And:
Since Tesla began manufacturing cars without CD players, other companies like Ford and Toyota have recently followed. Downloads – once seen as the CD’s replacement – have plummeted 58 percent since peaking in 2012, their profits now even smaller than physical sales.
And:
Artists have taken note; Bruce Springsteen released his latest box set, The Album Collection Vol. 2, 1987-1996, exclusively on vinyl, with no CD option, unlike 2014’s Vol. 1.
So the music world is evolving to streaming and vinyl. CDs are still there, but that world is clearly shrinking.
Fascinating to see vinyl continue to take hold. That’s becoming the way to own music. And, clearly, there are people who still value that.
Re the Springsteen: while the above is true, this is just a collection of previously released albums. There are no bonus tracks, and it’s not a period that’s likely to sell a lot, so in many ways it makes sense to only release a limited edition.
I’ve recently joined the streaming world. But I still buy vinyl for my very favorite albums. The bands are really turning out some nice packaging and extras, plus the vinyl is really nice quality compared to what I had when I was a kid.
The problem for the music industry is there’s too much music for people to own everything they like. I’ve taken the streaming + vinyl route for that reason. Most of my listening is consumption. Vinyl is reserved for music I savor. If an album isn’t worth the effort that comes with playing vinyl, it’s not worth owning.
Vinyl is rounding error*.
It’s also interesting to note (see link below) that RIAA’s “paid music subscription revenues” includes “Amazon Prime” in its “limited tier” … which is a lot of the growth year-to-year, though not the majority.
The small problem with that is … lots of people have Prime for reasons that aren’t music; I think I have literally never used Prime Music, and I’ve been a Prime member for years.
Note also that downloads have “plummeted 58% since 2012”, yet are still $1.3B in revenue… and let’s remember that far, far, far more of that is profit than you get from a physical purchase, because overhead is far lower.
The “revenue vs. profit” distinction is incredibly important to any business analysis, so naturally the Stone glosses over it entirely.
(* Disclosure: I own a nice Technics turntable, and have purchased vinyl this year, so I’m not a hater as such. It’s just true. The “resurgence”, outside of DJ culture, is rounding error and hipster posturing.
[I also won’t pretend vinyl is actually a superior medium; it’s pure nostalgia and physicality.]
Because total vinyl shipments, per RIAA, were $395M. That’s, note, shipments, not profit. (In fact, they note it doesn’t include deductions for returns of unsold product!)
Vinyl requires inventory management, pressing and printing, shipping, retail space to sell [if it’s not direct sales] – the record store seems to take most of what little profit exists in the space, outside of direct sales.
Me, I either buy mine straight from the artist as show merch, or from the label, direct, because I buy things that are weird and unpopular and wouldn’t be in a record shop anyway.)
We still go after CDs for some music, but over the past decade we’ve gradually turned to digital purchases where we feel less need for some sort of “keepsake” object.
We have more than enough monthly expenses to want to add yet another subscription fee to the list. Streaming is someone else’s indulgence, as are the fragility, physical rituals, and storage space required for vinyl. 12″ album art notwithstanding.
Music hasn’t played a significant role in my life for a long time…new music for longer. Even back before the iPod I listened mostly to oldies radio. I still buy music occasionally, but I think I spend less in a year than it would cost me for Spotify or Apple Music for a month. So I’m not the consumer the music industry is trying to please. But I’ll be sad when I can’t go to the iTunes store and plunk down a buck-twenty-nine and buy a track every so often.
Vinyl was always too much hassle, and way too fragile, to say nothing of not being very mobile at all.
I’m also almost never in an environment where one can appreciate premium sound reproduction quality.
Today’s music is crap for the most part. I only ever listen to mainly ’60s and ’70s era stuff—much of even that being crap.
So, streaming via Apple Music is ideal for me.
I can pick and choose playlists, deleting any of them when I want.
I also love that playlist are available on all of my Apple devices.
No room in our budget for a streaming subscription.
The craze for vinyl utterly mystifies me. For those who have not drunk the looney tunes audiophile kool-aid, records are by far inferior in every way to CDs. (which are in turn inferior in almost every way to digital files)
We still sometimes buy CDs. Mostly if and only if buying a used CD is cheaper than buying the digital download. Which is most of the time for music that’s not brand new. Otherwise, we get the CD only if we’re going to be giving the music as a gift – it’s kinda hard to gift wrap an MP3 download.
I don’t care how many sparkles they paste to it, I’m not buying into a system where I don’t own the music. Even if a wealthy relative dies tomorrow and we had more than enough money, not getting a streaming subscription. Been there with cable TV box rentals and oh so many other related rip offs. Not interested in going there again.