Did vinyl sales just hit the proverbial brick wall?


Interesting read here about the state of vinyl. Personally, I had no idea what the percentage of vinyl sales was “merchandise” never to be opened or played.

 

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/did-the-music-business-just-kill?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

128x128wturkey

Thanks grisly, check it out, I am always adding new ones so keep checking. Thanks

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Rihanna put on a great show at the SB! Who would you rather see, 80 year old Bob Dylan singing Blowing in the Wind? I am a big Dylan fan and I still wouldn't want to see that. It's 2023! Not the 60's or 70's. 

Anyway, I have two nieces under 30 that are both into records, I was in a record store last week and saw a 20 year old, they are far and few between, but they exist. As for records peaking, I would say they are leveling off, the classics will always be worth something. Some of the new stuff will become classics (Taylor Swift for one) and others will be in the cut-out bin.

So...vinyl and cassette sales both grew but the market for physical media overall is shrinking.The vinyl revival has always been niche in the context of overall music consumption. If the figures quoted are accurate, it hasn't hit a brick wall. Just the growth of uptake has slowed.

That's hardly a surprise. It's a very expensive way to reproduce what are now mainly digital files originally. And now that those files are available streamed in their original format - which is increasingly high resolution digital - the usp of vintyl decreases.

As a final negative, vinyl is environmentally unfriendly and the recent state of oil prices will have done nothing to improve pricing of vinyl releases.

Despite all that, sales are still growing.

 

 

 

The issue may be that the LP is being sold as a premium product that is worth a high price. If the market has softened I would think the manufacturers have a lot of room to cut the price, pocketing their profits from the flush times and picking up what lesser profits remaining to be had. If, as I believe, the vinyl market is primarily driven by some listeners' distaste for the digital sound, I think there would always be a hard core to support it.