according to the npr article, "high end" sales totalled $200m in 2010 (i'm not sure about the statistic; i've read $1 billion elsewhere). for all the talk about vinyl's resurgence, only 2.4m total units were sold in 2010. these are staggeringly tiny numbers-- by way of comparison, apple sold $3.4 billion worth of ipods alone in 2010 and lady antebellum (whoever she is) and justin beiber sold more than 3m cds each. all of which points to the rapidly increasing marginalization of traditional audiophilia, at least as we think of it--there seems to be little or no economic incentive to continue to develop or manufacture high end products, and this little community (like a group of latin scholars) looks ever more like a dying breed.
