|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
88.97.21.18
In Reply to: RE: You don't have to know anything technical to know digital is not delivering posted by Ralph on April 18, 2017 at 12:59:34
Sorry Ralph but I am afraid that your comment does not stand up to close examination . Yes LPs may have grown in sales last year but the really big growth is in streaming. Unless you know how to stream vinyl per se though the internet then I have to consider that streaming = digital.
I am also not convinced that the whole vinyl revival thing isn't just a fashion blip so let's look at it again in, say, five years. No, vinyl sales have not been on the increase since 1992, only recently.
BTW . I continue to use both LP and tubes. Also digital and transistors. In fact anything whereby I can get the music as that is important and ultimately formats aren't.
Follow Ups:
Sorry, that is simply not true. I was online in mid-90's arguing with one Arnie Krueger about the fact that vinyl had started increasing one or two years before. His argument then was the same as yours ..... just a "fad". A fad that has now lasted for more than ten years.
Harry
Thanks for your comment . I am impressed that you must have been reading the Critics forum intensley to respond to a month old posting from me.
What you say about the mid 1990s showing a vinyl sales increase isn't the case. Not because I have an opinion about it but because the facts say so. In fact vinyl sales declined year by year until 2007.
I will just take a couple of dipstick figures but the show what was going on. These are official IFPI numbers:
LPs 1996 compared to 1995 -33%
2000 compared to 1999 -13.3%
2005 comppared to 2004 -8.5%
However your second point that vinyl growth has now lasted for 10 years is accordingly true ( albeit from a very low base). Perhaps I should revise my opinion about a fad.
Nevertheless I would like to look at vinyl sales by age group but cannot find stats. There is a potential that the continuing growth may not be sustained long term. I have recently been seeing anecdotal evidence that what had originally been portrayed in the press as an interest in the medium by young people (causing my potential fad idea) is not the whole picture. It seems that a considerable part of the growth is old guys re-living their youth. A bit like retirees buying their first Harley Davison. Unfortunately those who form part of the latter group of vinyl buyers are inevitably a dying breed. I guess that I'm amongst them except that I never abandoned LPs.
What I said was that the LP had outsold digital downloads for the first time in the UK; it was widely reported:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/12/07/vinyl-surpasses-digital-sales-in-some-music-markets-time-to-ask-santa-for-a-turntable/?utm_term=.1e7ed19ca222
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/06/vinyl-albums-outsell-digital-downloads-first-time/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/06/tables-turned-as-vinyl-records-outsell-digital-in-uk-for-first-time
http://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-album-sales-outstrip-digital-downloads-first-time-ever-1893095
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/8/vinyl-albums-outpace-digital-downloads-first-time-/
Thanks for you response.
I am, and have been, very aware of the sales figures for various audio media both in my own country and internationally. However I believe that you ( and some of the journalists that you link to) are assuming incorrectly that a unique correlation exists between the decline in CD sales and the increase in LP sales. This stance completely overlooks the actual driver for the decline in CD sales (and downloads); streaming which (for the UK) increased by 68% (2016 over 2015).
Yes vinyl continued to grow. However sales for 2016 in the UK totalled 3.2 million units. This is against 123 million total album equivalent sales overall. So 3 million vinyl against 120 million digital (various digital formats). Not figures that would lead me to conclude that digital isn't performiing.
That is not to minimise vinyl's increasing success but it is from a very low starting point. Nor does it overlook the decline in CD and downloads. However the slack caused by the latter has been largely taken up by the digital medium of streaming and not by vinyl which remains a minority interest according to the above figures.
Those are annual figures. However the articles linked by you refer to the Christmas period( wk 48) which is not necessarily a good indicator for a market overall (if it were then turkey would be the number one preferred meat throughout the year :-).
-
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: