There is no resurgence, perhaps a Renaissance in vinyl, but what you're really seeing is just the fall of CD down to vinyl's levels.
Including both and just looking without inflation, it’s above 1989 levels and could hit 1988 levels eventually. It’s 5x higher than mid 90s through late 00s. Almost 4x since 2010.
Take out vinyl singles and the increase is absurd. It’s 9x to 40x+ increase from any year between 1991 and 2007. 8x from 2008. Almost 2x from 2013.
And this is all for 2018 figures. 2019 will bump things up even more. Though the pace has slowed a lot.
Even if you add inflation, the resurgence is still there. IE for LP/EP, 2019 will beat out 1989. After a low of nearly 25x less in 93 and 05-06.
I'm having trouble viewing those graphs on mobile but it looks like in 1989 vinyl only had >4% market share and 34.6 million units, where as in 2018 it had >3% with 16.7 million units.
It's not nothing and it's not a large part of the overall market. It appears to be smaller than 30 years ago when it was considered a dead format.
Unit share doesn’t seem to make sense as a comparison point to me. A single or ringtone shouldn’t be given equal respect to a full collection of songs. Downloaded singles are 75% of the unit market share but only 5% of the revenue market share in 2018. 2018 will be the last year downloaded singles have a greater revenue share than vinyl.
To me this looks like a resurgence because of how its revenue share has been. Its collapse of market and revenue share from ~83 to ~92 and being dead by 89 (with 3.3% revenue share, less than the past 5 years if including 2019). Having a revenue share of 0.1% from 93 to 07. Yeah, for 25 years it’s revenue share was 0.1%. Then ~1.5% for the next 5-6 years and ~4.5% for the past couple of years.
It’s not a crazy resurgence, but compared to 93 to ~2012, a 25 year span, it’s many multiples higher and not looking to let up for now.
Now it’s on a tear compared to 93 to 07 and beyond.
There’s active communities online and in real life of people who like vinyl and are buying it. Though there were always enthusiasts. The buying part wasn’t happening from 93 to 07. If you can run a successful business off something that isn’t trending down, without the biz being too crazy, then the thing isn’t really dead. It’s niche sure. But dead wouldn’t make sense. Cassettes are dead. Paying for ringtones are dead. Those two aren’t close to vinyl.
I have at least 30 albums that simply do not exist as downloads, streaming, or any other digital medium. And there are people today who are still putting out new music in analog formats that will never get a digital release.
And I'm not even much of a music buff. If I have 30 "lost" albums, there must be tens of thousands more out there that simply do not exist to people who restrict themselves to digital formats.
I really don't understand why some people choose to limit themselves to digital. That's like deciding to only eat tacos for the rest of your life.
I can't afford the physical space for physical goods and the expense involved with moving them.
You can buy Pet Sounds, a classic album recorded in 1966, on vinyl:
- Distribution: you can buy it from Amazon, the same distribution channel as more modern media
- Price: for $18 (very small premium over digital media in absolute terms)
- Condition: in perfect, newly manufactured condition
- Substitutability: a functionally perfect substitute good for the artifact manufactured in 1966 (even available in original mono!)
- Supply: from a growing supply of records (record company always reissuing classics!)
- Maintenance: with the same maintenance requirements as an LP of a 2019 album
Consider the equivalent for a classic car, say a 1966 Corvette:
I want a 1966 Corvette. "Old Corvettes have a soul that new Corvettes lack, there's just some ineffable quality I prefer, y'know?", yadda yadda yadda
- Distribution: Can I walk into a Chevy dealership and buy a 1966 Corvette? Nope!
- Price: Can I buy a mint condition 1966 Corvette for substantially the same price as a 2019 Corvette? Nope! DDG says perfect 1966 Corvette value would be $82k, 2019 Corvette would be $55k and I suspect the difference would be even greater tbh. $30k+ price difference!
- Condition: Can I buy a newly manufactured 1966 Corvette at all? Nope!
- Substitutability: the 1966 Corvette is substantially different from the 2019 Corvette
- Supply: the number of well-maintained 1966 Corvettes is constrained. They aren't making any more!
- Maintenance: Entirely different beasts. No common parts.
So if I want a conversation piece in my living room, I can buy a $100 record player and spend $8 more for the LP
We can see this pretty clearly looking at consumer reports[1], where you'll find that vinyls, compared to CDs, are actually being propped up largely by generations (18-44) that never properly experienced them. CD usage, on the other hand, is generally supported by older generations that are slower to adapt to modern streaming. Vinyl is almost vicarious nostalgia- most vinyl users I know (generally from the same age bracket) enjoy it as a deprecated technology that feels exotic. CDs aren't necessary for us anymore, and since we grew up with them, they aren't as enchanting and romanticized as vinyl.
[1] http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/MusicWatch-Co...
The market for new cars still exists because some people don't like teleportation. Some people worry that teleportation recreates you imperfectly on the other side and thus prefer a new car. But that demographic is shrinking. Teleportation is simply so convienent that the overwhelming majority of consumers think the price worth paying.
Teleportation could recreate me perfectly, imperfectly, or better than perfectly - the issue is what happens to the original me. Rumor has it that after scanning your body the origin portal drops you into a trash compactor.
You can see some of that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Additionally, bands will typically get better margins on vinyl (although that's starting to disappear).
You mention that "it's getting worse", but it's unlikely that you'd be able to find a release mastered/remastered with noticable digital clipping within the last decade.
As one example of how basic a concern this is for digital mastering, Apple's "Apple Digital Masters" (formerly "Mastered for iTunes") program strictly limits it, recommendeds testing for the existence of clipping both pre- and post-encode, and provides tools (afclip, AURoundTripAAC Audio Unit) for helping to do that.
Generally, "loudness wars" refers primarily to dynamic range compression, which can easily destroy a track (in the musical sense) even if there is zero clipping.
24-bit doesn't tend to matter, because somewhere in the mastering pipeline will inevitably be 16-bit nine times out of ten.
And the compression they use in 16-bit to try and have their cake and eat it too has more noticeable than the issues with vinyl IMO. Yes, there's technically plenty of room in there for the signal without compression or clipping, but like I showed above there's systemic reasons why they don't use the bandwidth effectively.
It's a case of worse is better.
I think LPs are bad for our environment compared to digital. I don't need tens of kilograms of plastic to enjoy music even if I would enjoy the process more than digital music players.
What brand of computer, MP3 player, or phone are you using that isn't made of plastic and filled with minerals that come from strip mines and processed with chemicals like cyanide?
Digitally the price per song of is offset by the sheer number of albums you can have. I have 1,926 albums and I can overwrite them with new artists on the same storage and I can add 10x more to the same storage. Or I can reuse the storage for something else. This versatility is called "re-use" and it's a pillar of environmental sustainability.
If it wasn't a malleable plastic, and I've read of metals being used, then perhaps it would be different. But even then density and permanence and shipping still make it incredibly inefficient to distribute data in this fashion - an LP only holds about 200 - 300 megabytes of write-once data.
Steaming music continues environmental damage for as long as the server is on.
Most (new) physical records I buy come with a download code to get high quality drm-free recordings. It's like getting the physical book and the e-reader copy.
There is only one thing digital delivery can't do: satisfy the collector's itch. There's no rarity or difficulty. You can't keep it on a shelf and take pride in your collection. You can't trade or barter. You can't get it signed by the band or buy it at a show. You can't browse it in a shop. You can't pass it on to your children. There's no romanticism about it, and it doesn't engage any other senses.
It turns out however, that vinyl is great at all those things. It seems evident that its resurgence is because everyone who wants to collect music is consolidating on vinyl as a format, while those who just want to listen to music stick with streaming services. It's highlighting the fact that music consumption is actually highly bimodal, and delivering a product optimized for each modality.
I look after my vinyl with a properly calibrated turntable.
I will degrade faster than my records!
There's a lot to be said about the imperfections in vinyl playback combined with the analog output.
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-does-vinyl-really-sound-be...
It's not about technology, of course, it's about fun. Like analog photography.
Have a good friend to share the experience with?
Recommended.