Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year

http://fortune.com/2019/01/06/vinyl-cassette-sales-2018-growth/

by jmsflknr • 8 years ago

33 22 8 years ago

bluedino• 8 years ago

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.

criddell4• 8 years ago

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.

tyfon• 8 years ago

Maybe they miss the sound MCs make after a couple of hot summers in the glove compartment :)

Personally I have many vinyls but the only MCs I have (2 boxes full) contain ZX spectrum games. I wonder how many of them still work, I haven't had it out for a spin in a couple years.

gdulli• 8 years ago

I read once that prisons only use cassettes because optical media can be turned into weapons.

KozmoNau73• 8 years ago

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.

cyberferret• 8 years ago

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.

wink• 8 years ago

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...

AndrewDucker2• 8 years ago

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

AndrewDucker2• 8 years ago

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

https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RIAA-Mid-Yea...

ricardobeat2• 8 years ago

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.

VelNZ• 8 years ago

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.

KozmoNau73• 8 years ago

"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.

Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year

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