One of my friend recently told me that the overall sale of LPs surpassed CDs. Can it be true? I thought he was joking, but somehow he was serious. Well, MP3s and music download certainly has not helped to boost the CD sales, but I think the overall LP sale is still a fraction of CD sales.
Anyway, I've seen steady increase in used LP sales. I could get decent ones at $1~3 about 6~7 years ago, but now it is more like $3~6.
Something was missing in the communication or your friend is mistaken. Think about it; you can purchase cds at nearly any large large retailer. Where can you purchase lps? You don't need to do much research to figure which sell more but I hope someone here brings the stats.
Vinyl is out selling CD's. But it's mainly in Europe. The youth in Europe are buying lots of 45's. What a hoot ay. Young people want quality instead of ease of use in Europe. I do prefer 45's also but you have to get up alot more when you are listening. I also heard it is the preferred media in Japan but that could be false. It was told to me by a record store owner, he said a company from Japan was buying used vinyl from him in volume.
The percentage of increase in LP sales outstrips that of CD's. A couple of years ago, LP sales were up 100%. CD sales were down. That said, the amount of actual sales of LP's compared to CD's is miniscule.
Yes, I feel somehow stupid to ask such question here. I knew he was dead long, but he was so convincing, so I was wondering. Yeh, he must be smoking something. More probably he read somewhere about the increase rate of the recent LP sales and misinterpreted it. (His English is a lot worse than mine ;-)
No way are LPs outselling cds, wavs, mp's, etc. The ratio used to be 1:1000 or thereabouts.
I had some stats fm a few yrs ago and actually posted them on A'gon -- but can't find them now.
Generally, LPs are outselling other small production items such as dvd-a & sacd as Albert notes.
Much of the sales volume comes from the pro sector (DJs) and 45rpm is making a "come back" of sorts srevicing that market.
Value and volume-wise, there seemed to be no stats regarding the used LP business -- apparently, it's quite large in volume but not in value I'd expect.
Overall, the GOOD news is that the business values are sufficient to warrant continued interest from vinyl producers -- so please, all, do buy the odd LP every now & then:)!
approximates....80 to 85% cd (dvda,sacd and hybrid is 1 to 2% of that)....digital delivery...15 to 20%.....vinyl lp's are around .01%.....note that the 'used' software business is not refleted here, nor illegal downloading.....all % except downloading have declined for the last 3 years running.
one more thing...the number of lp 'releases' were up for a few years, but sales on a per title basis are now way down....on average , a vinyl run (gernerally the first is also the last is around 1200 units. the vinyl reissue business is the lion's share of that, and prepping a vinyl release is now at the point (with exception)where the economics are a struggle. note the slowdown by mosaic, sundazed, classic, etc. and others like simply vinyl have disappeared. its a jungle out there.......the flurry of new turntables will now slow down as well.
I would love to see a chart of sales per yer in $ volume of LPs, CDs, and MP3s over the last 20 years. Obviously at the onset of CDs, LPs were selling more, but very rapidly CDs took over sales by a huge (someone reported 1000:1 and I don't doubt that) margin. Now I'm wondering if the same trend will occur with mp3 (and other download formats) over the CD. It would not surprise me a bit. Surely this data exists somewhere.
ALL TIME SALES??? Then obviously from early in the 20th century it is possible more lp's have been produced considering it has like a 100 or 75 year history opposed to about 20 mainstream years of CD.. However if its just for The year of 2006 or 07' I would really doubt the 300 or more cd's sold a day at each best buy would be even less than that of LP.
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