According to the RIAA, It doesn't look good for physical media


The RIAA mid-year 2020 report is out and physical media, CDs or LPs, are not doing well. CDs still ship more units (10.6 million to 8.8 million), but LPs have surpassed them in $ amount shipped (CD - $130 million to LP - $232 million) for the first time since the 80s.

CD units shipped fell 45% from the mid-year 2019 report. LP units shipped gained 2.3%. Downloads also fell. Total Streaming revenues were up 12%. Total revenues for all categories were up 5.6%.

https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Mid-Year-2020-RIAA-Revenue-Statistics.pdf

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Showing 1 response by tomcy6

This statement is misleading.
The statistic of dollar amount of LP’s exceeding CD can be explained by higher pricing of LP’s per unit. Vinyl can be more than 2x the price of a CD.

How is it misleading? I just stated what each format shipped in units and dollars.

It is inevitable that units of LP will overtake CD.

Yes it is, maybe by the end of this year. But that percentage change year over year for vinyl units shipped isn’t too far from going negative.

Amount of CDs sold most likely doesn’t include used CDs sale.

No, it doesn’t. Nor does the LP number. These are units shipped by the record labels during the first half of 2020.

My Discogs collection value is going up faster than my 401k.

Might be a good time to sell if you want that money. I think there will be more collections going up for sale as more boomers depart. In the last 20 years I've watched bubbles inflate and burst in baseball cards, tech stocks and real estate. I'm sure there have been many others.