https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RIAA-Mid-Yea...
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.
I no more want to flip through LP-style artwork than I do photographs of friends and family, which are also only digital. What I'd like is high resolution (at least 4K for my monitor/TV) artwork that could be shown while an album is playing.
Plus, the physical experience of owning and playing them was never anywhere near as pleasant as vinyl.
They've been in my attic for the past 10 years experiencing extreme temperatures that would have destroyed vinyl (probably 130 degrees in the summer and freezing during the winter). So far every CD I've played has played perfectly.
> a complex and brittle laser reader
It's a very low tech thing at this point. The player I used the day I brought the disks down was $9 at Target and it worked just fine.
> the physical experience of owning and playing them was never anywhere near as pleasant as vinyl
I don't think it's that far off, especially when you factor in some of the audio advantages that the CD format has.
Vinyl is more fun though, no question about it. The format you are proposing would be even less fun. CDs have problems, but they are still (for now) the dominant format, by a factor of around 6x.