
Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year - jmsflknr
http://fortune.com/2019/01/06/vinyl-cassette-sales-2018-growth/
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cyberferret
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a friend of a friend's place for a Christmas
party, where he had the most amazing audio setup in his house - thousands of
vinyls and a high end turntable and amplifiers, with state of the art speakers
all around the room.

He tasked me with being the 'DJ' for the night and pick any album and spin it
on the turntable, which I eagerly did. Grabbing those album covers, reading
the jackets and the inside sleeves etc. just brought back to me how much fun
it was doing the same back in the 80's.

Not to mention the sheer happiness and memories just seeing some of the cover
art could bring back. People across the room would see me pull down an album
from the shelf and run up to me screaming "Oooh, I remember that one!! Play
track 4 on the 'B' side - that was the song playing when I experienced my
first kiss..." etc.

Something about that tri fold combination of audio, visual and touch with
vinyl that made the experience a whole lot more deeply immersing. Plus the
added bonus of discovering hidden gems on the 'B' side of most albums.

Cassettes on the other hand? Other than making my own mixtapes for my friends,
I always found the cassette experience a PITA.

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wink
I don't get why this would be unique to vinyl. Take my generation that grew up
with CDs in the 90s and it's the same thing. So yes, that differentiates "us"
from the younger generations that grew up on streaming, but I'm not still
buying CDs because I like the medium. It's only because I want the physical
thing at home (in good quality, as opposed to vinyl) - I'm only _using_ the
MP3s...

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VelNZ
I buy vinyl but don't own a record player (yet). I do it for albums I love
because of the large format artwork, extra notes/images inside and supporting
the artists. Digital music has become essentially free and vinyl represents a
physical manifestation of music and pride of ownership, which is becoming
increasingly rare these days.

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KozmoNau7
"Pride of ownership" is nothing more than a symptom of consumerism. It's an
attachment to physical manifestations of an ephemeral thing (music itself),
which confers no benefits over a digitally stored or streamed copy of the same
music, other than the fetishized ritual of tactile interaction with an object.

That's not to say I wholly condemn the concept, I do collect classic rock and
metal on vinyl, however only for albums where it was the original release
format. Buying new music on vinyl is ridiculous, there are so many other
better ways to support artists.

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bluedino
Nostalgia, gifts, hobbyists.

I’m actually impressed with the vinyl niche/trend - Compact discs only sold 70
million (plummeting big time) last year compared to vinyl at almost 10
million.

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criddell
The vinyl market I understand. The large format artwork, the physicality of
the disk and needle, the collecting, and the nostalgia factor are all pretty
compelling. The cassette revival I don't get at all. I would guess it's not
going anywhere.

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KozmoNau7
I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and my primary playback format was
cassette tape, until I was around 12-13 and got my own CD player. I first
listened to classic albums like Deep Purple - Machine Head and various Beatles
albums on tape, so there will always be a certain nostalgia factor there. I
assume a lot of other people around my age feel the same way.

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criddell
Cassettes might always be around but I think the only reason they saw double
digit growth is because the market is so small. However, I can't see somebody
choosing cassettes (or for that matter, 8-track cartridges) as the primary
format for their music collection in the same way some do with vinyl or CDs.

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KozmoNau7
Oh no no, absolutely not. I only keep a handful of cassette tapes around for
nostalgic reasons, and I don't have a tape deck anymore, because it seems
rather pointless, as you say.

I just like to hang on to obsolete media that once meant the world to me, so I
have a couple of tapes, some 3.5" floppy disks and a couple of MiniDiscs
(still shrinkwrapped), purely for nostalgia and maybe one day as something to
show the eventual grandkids.

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AndrewDucker
Sadly, nothing in there to say what percentage of the music business vinyl
actually makes up. Is it 1%, 5%,or what?

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AndrewDucker
Done some digging. Looks like vinyl is about $200million from $4billion.

[https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RIAA-Mid-
Yea...](https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RIAA-Mid-
Year-2018-Revenue-Report.pdf)

~~~
ricardobeat
Wow, hadn't realized how fast the transition to streaming went. It now
responds for 75% of _all_ revenue for the music industry (makes the Spotify
semi-monopoly all the more worrying).

To put vinyl sales in context, it is almost _half of all physical units_ in
revenue. I think the AUR for an LP is much higher, but still impressive.

I've been thinking about how the vinyl/cd experience could be brought back
into the digital era; something with space for decent artwork, like an SD card
in a vinyl sleeve or something in between, and a chromecast-like player to
match. Something you would be proud to own and display, with a low entry
barrier in terms of equipment. If anybody is interested in working on
something like this, my email is in my profile.

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Symbiote
I buy CDs, since I want to own a copy of high-quality audio. I then copy them
to my computer, and they sit in a box.

I no more want to flip through LP-style artwork than I do photographs of
friends and family, which are also only digital. What I'd like is high
resolution (at least 4K for my monitor/TV) artwork that could be shown while
an album is playing.

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abrowne
Too bad the CD format makes it difficult to get a perfect rip. I prefer a FLAC
(or WAV as I occasionally see) download over CDs, but CDs are my second
choice, especially for older albums with used copies available.

~~~
__x0x__
Tools like Exact Audio Copy and cdparanoia have made it possible to do bit
perfect DAE since the last millenuium.

