Vinyl sales surpass CDs for the first time since 1986:
A mid-year revenue report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has revealed vinyl sales in 2020 have surpassed compact disc (CD) sales for the first time since the mid-1980s. The report also reveals the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the physical media music market hard but streaming music subscriptions are up.
For the last decade the resurgence of vinyl has been slow and steady. From a constant parade of novel turntable designs to Sony resuming vinyl production in one of its Japanese plants after a 30-year pause, it's been clear this old medium has a growing fanbase.
In the newly released RIAA revenue report, it seems vinyl has finally put the CD back in its place. For the first time since 1986 gross vinyl sales were higher than CD sales. According to the report, across the first half of 2020 American vinyl sales accounted for US$232 million in revenue compared to just $129.9 million for CD sales.
Vinyl sales have not grown much, but CD sales have crashed.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:26AM (3 children)
Most groovy! [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:28AM (2 children)
Groovy! said the vinyl, while the CD rolled away muttering:"holey sh!t!!"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:23PM (1 child)
How does Sony put rootkits on vinyl?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:28PM
By recording the audio backwards and putting the Autoexec.bat in the root directory.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @10:43AM (26 children)
I still buy CD's from some artists directly, to support them(one of them being Ayreon, shameless plug). When I do, I often buy the vinyl LP too, for the cover art etc
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:23PM (23 children)
Transitus drops in just 9 days, are you as excited as I am? I'm only getting the CD though, no interest in the vinyl.
I buy all my music on CD, it's often cheaper than buying the MP3s and is higher quality. From talking to my young coworkers, none of them buy music at all. So it's not MP3s killing CDs, it's streaming :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:35PM (17 children)
It's all just data at the end of the day if you buy CDs. The real tragedy is that people are fine with 128 Kbps audio even though they can fit a terabyte on a thumbnail.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:48PM (3 children)
Yep, I'd happily buy a digital download if it was as cheap and the same quality as CDs, but they usually aren't :(
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 17 2020, @01:46AM (2 children)
Bandcamp has flacs. They're the same quality as Cds (or at least ought to be).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @07:17AM (1 child)
Yep, bandcamp is great for a couple of obscurer things, but very few artists seem to use it. I reckon about a 10-20% hit rate from my amazon wishlist.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday September 18 2020, @09:50AM
I've started seeing a lot more popular bands coming onto it recently. Maybe not all the bigshot millionaires but artists way more popular than the usual indie/underground scene.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:48PM (8 children)
(Note to self - must go back and re-rip CD collection in lossless while optical drives are still a thing...)
I think today it's more about streaming over mobile internet than how many songs you can carry around - and if you're listening to [insert Mr Cowell's latest prodigy] over Beats form-over-function earphones in a noisy environment, nothing of value is lost...
Anyway, even Amazon does better than 128K these days (250+ k VBR) or if you get music somewhere like Bandcamp you can have lossless.
As for this new-fangled vinyl trend, the real real tragedy is when people invoke junk science to prove vinyl is "better". If you like the sound, like the ritual of handling LPs, like the artwork then that's perfectly valid and respectable - you don't listen to music For Science - just don't crack open the snake oil and become a Nyquist denier to justify it. In purely technical terms, vinyl is a lousy music format. In subjective terms, I totally get the appeal (personally, I get too obsessive about dust and scratches to enjoy it but that's my problem).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:46PM (1 child)
Buy 1-3 external USB optical drives by 2030, stick them in a box somewhere, bust them out when you're retired and bored.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:51PM
That's more or less what I did. I've got an optical bluray drive, but you still want to rip them to a lossless format anyways. Preferably, one that allows the recreation of the disc exactly as it was, just for the sake of convenience. It's far quicker to scan several thousand images on a HDD for errors than to check hundreds of discs where you're swapping discs after each one.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:54PM (4 children)
betterless worse. The whole thing is a tantrum because they weren't able to get recordable media banned years ago.(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:20PM (2 children)
WTF? Is this for real? Where can we read the technical details of this? Or are you talking about the Loudness Wars?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:28PM
Nah, he probably head it from that "Q" guy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @03:13AM
Look up the loudness war.
GP's theory sounds plausible. If so, they've been waiting for this moment for decades.
However, a cheap USB phonograph could be all it takes to foil their evil schemes.
Instead the loudness war sounds like the kind of shit you get when you put men in charge.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:02AM
I perfectly remember, CDs sounded harsh. First because the first readers didn't have the sweet sounding DACs that you can get on a 50$ card now. Second, in the clubs, because the club was geared for vinyl. More dynamics on the bass, more highs.
Today, yep, there are some mixers that treat both vinyl and digital well (tried the rane something-2014, great toy) but overall the dj is gonna land on a soundsystem that is geared for digital and vinyl will sound a bit opaque.
Every time vinyl pops up in a discussion, people talk about the reduced SNR and the noise. No, it's not only that. There is also the phase limitation, and there is IMHO the nonlinear groove to electric transformation which alters (some say warm up, like for valves) the sound. Fact, vinyl and even tape (with the dolby stuff) sound different, and e.g. for sterile electronic music they sometimes sound more interesting. Fact, lossy encoding is also a way to psychoacustically remaster the signal and that makes sometimes tracks sound better. Deal with it.
As for performance, while the good dj is not defined by the ability of keeping records in sync or making sense of complicated rhythms, DJing with vinyl is nonetheless more delicate and therefore makes a set more fun to see and to perform.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:34PM
I remember about 30 years ago talking to someone who insisted that vinyl was better. There was a certain 'fat' to the sound that you couldn't get on CD. I tried to press him on whether he meant the pops and hisses, or something else, and suggested that whatever it was could just be mastered onto the CD. He wasn't ultimately able to articulate anything coherent, but at least he didn't invoke junk science. Just fat.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:26PM (3 children)
If they would properly master CDs you'd see very few people interested in putting up with vinyl. True, there are cool things about vinyl like the album art and being able to pull out a disc and remove it from its sleave before playing, but they degrade rather quickly over time and they're virtually impossible to back up if you've got a rare release.
If they'd make the most of CDs by using more of the dynamic range, the sound would be superior and when taken care of properly they last for decades. On top of which, you can easily rip them to FLAC or other lossless formats for easy conversion if you decide you need a different format.
Personally, I refuse to buy music that doesn't come in either a CD or lossless format. The ability to script the conversion of my entire music catalog when a different format comes out is priceless. These days it's less of an issue, but back in the day, I'd have a lower quality copy for my MP3 player and a higher quality for at home.
Sadly with Google being such dicks about Google Music, I may have to go back to doing that again. I'm not giving them money every month for the ability to play with my screen off or deal with the hassles of maintaining a separate copy of every song I might want to play because Google thinks they need to be paid.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:18AM (2 children)
> but they degrade rather quickly over time
First of all YOU DONT TOUCH THE RECORD SURFACE at all, you take it by the sides all the time. If I can do it when DJing in the club, you can do it with no pressure whatsoever at home.
Second you take care of the needle. LPs when your needle is worn get ruined. Worn needle = thin needle. It also happen when the dj puts too much weight on the arm, but not much as a worn/ruined needle. I played in clubs, 3 grams is overkill if you have a good turntable and a good desk.
EPs or singles, with an elliptical needle, balanced arm before setting weight and antiskating, and the record will last longer than you, meatbags.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:33PM (1 child)
TBH, that seems like an awful lot of work when we have technology that does a better job and doesn't require any of that work.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @03:27PM
Why paint when you can use a tablet? why get an automatic chronograph when your phone has the time? why buy a DOHC with carbs when an all electric is round the corner? why travel when you can google map around?
When bots finally take over, nobody will tell the difference. Meatbaggery already lost.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:01PM
Oh yes, what I've heard of Transitus so far sounds nice, and it will be nice to have another peek into another rock opera in a self-contained universe. To my partner's amusement("Are you turning gay on me?!", said with a smirk), I want to see Theory of Everything turned into a musical :p
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:38PM (3 children)
If I thought there was something worth buying, I'd get it on CD.
I didn't think there was anything worth buying since like 2005.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:52PM (1 child)
Awww, look at the widdle grumpy arsehole stuck in the past...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:22AM
I would rather keep the music done till 1979 than the one done since.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:55PM
There probably is, it's just that you have to search for it as it tends to be indie groups that don't get much coverage. From roundabout 2005 on the music got so similar to other songs that it's really hard to know who you're even listening to. For those that like it, or don't know better, it's not too bad, but for people that have heard good music, it is kind of depressing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 17 2020, @01:45AM (1 child)
OK, so now I have had to add Ayreon into my Bandcamp list, so thanks for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:34AM
Welcome among the Ayreonauts. I can also recommend listening to some of his sideprojects, such as Arjen A. Lucassen's Star One for example(my favourite tracks from that project are Starchild, Songs of the Ocean and It All Ends Here)
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:15PM (1 child)
As soon as I saw the title I pretty much figured this was what really happened. The comparison tries to imply that people are moving away from CDs and over to vinyl and that's not the case at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:56PM
Last I checked, Vinyl sales are in fact up, just not nearly as much as CD's have dropped. RIAA was flogging them hard for a while there, trying to get people to move back to vinyl.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BananaPhone on Wednesday September 16 2020, @01:37PM (2 children)
Big thanks to RHCP!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @10:52PM (1 child)
And while that makes for shitty sound, you know what also makes shitty sound? Vinyl. The only good sounding vinyl is mono. These idiot hipsters are buying stereo. A lot of frequency compression has to be done on vinyl, because the physical needle can't skip around fast and stay in the groove.
Now as far as the loudess wars - I'm not against that - in fact it makes for a better listening experience most of the time. I don't want super quiet parts and super loud parts. That's annoying as hell. I want a fairly constant watt-output coming into my ears. In fact, every sound device I have has sound normalization enabled. Now, if I'm sitting on a chair in my insulated theater room and want to enjoy classical music - I don't want compression. When I'm walking around the house with music or tv on - I absolutely do. When I'm driving I absolutely do. When I'm in my headphones on a city street or subway - I want it compressed.
The loudness wars aren't just about making it louder. They're about a better user experience for the 90% of use cases for the music you bought. I don't want a loud bang when the house kicks, the guitar plays a chord, and the singer screams all at the same time, with the rest of the song barely audible. I want everything compressed lower during that loud hit, so the volume of that hit is the same as the rest of the song.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:28PM
IMHO mono (got some mono 7 inches) is not as decisive for the overall DR as groove density and mastering technique. Club dance music could as well be mono, but then when you want to hear the tracks on the headphones...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @02:36PM
You haven't been able to expect CDs for years, it's all digital nowadays. At least DRM free is pretty much the norm.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:35PM (14 children)
Contactless players could prevent scratches to the disk. Especially if a mask is used to keep out dust from the player's insides.
I know this kind of equipment sounds expensive. But consider the superior result. And lack of scratches.
A large CD-like drawer slides open. You put the disk on the tray. It slides closed. You also insert a USB thumb drive.
The top of the vinyl disk is optically scanned, like a flatbed scanner upside down, without moving or rotating the disk.
Software analyzes the image, locates the spiral groove, and decodes the audio into high quality mp3 files up to 64 Kbps!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:58PM (4 children)
There's already laser players for vinyl, it's just that they're very expensive. And even with a laser, you've still got to deal with the issues associated with having a huge disc to work with. One of the issues with laser disc is that they're physically huge, which makes them a bit of a pain to store and deal with.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:08PM (3 children)
That kind of player sounds like it spins the disk while keeping the laser stationery. If you have a very big disk to play with, it might be better not to spin it around which could cause painful damage.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:17PM
Not anymore than CDs, you just have to enclose it.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:02PM (1 child)
laser turntables spin a camera taking photos of the record at high resolution. it's a glorified a flatbed scanner. software then produces sound from an interpretation of the photographed the record doesn't spin.
the reason those hipsters claim records sound superior is the lack of dac. then they get laser record players, since you know, it's the best, convert the analog to digital, then convert it back to analog. awesome. why the hell not just download it and get better sound without riia eq.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 18 2020, @01:50PM
I probably should not have said "painful" and "very big disk to play with".
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:58PM (2 children)
Contactless has been around for a while. The records still collect dust and still wear due to cleaning and handling. Vinyl also warps over time, let alone if it gets warm.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:09PM (1 child)
Once you've converted it to 64 Kbps mp3s, you would no longer need the vinyl disk.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:08PM
which would actually be fine - vinyl only has decent quality in mono, and for mono sound with modern encoders 64 kbps is not bad.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:37PM (1 child)
Was fortunate enough to inherit one of these from an uncle, about 15 years ago. Still works great,
https://www.linn.co.uk/sources/turntables [linn.co.uk]
It completely solved an acoustic/bass feedback problem I had with my old Technics (due to a bouncy floor).
Internally, the Linn suspension is similar to the old AR turntable*, but made to a high standard.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Research#Turntables [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:36AM
My 80s SL1210 are fine, one other DJ I know has a quite older SL1200, also fine. Just lubricate every decade they say, I didn't even do that.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:56PM (3 children)
The tray jams and your vinyl is kaput!
Fuck that. Point of vinyl is so that you can touch it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:43PM (2 children)
I thought it was because it had a hole large enough to fuck. The jizz that gets all over the B side is just part of the experience and why they usually put the best stuff on the A side.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 17 2020, @06:21PM (1 child)
I don't think so. Or at least I won't be able to do so.
A 33 LP has a spindle size (eg, size of your tool) of 7.2 mm.
But the disk has a slightly larger hole size of 7.26 mm. (or 0.286")
At least that is the size the RIAA thought suitable for your purposes when they set the standard.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:36PM
Maybe I got a big spindle on the sl1210s but most new records I have bought needed a bit of defloration when placed on the turntable. A tight hole does not affect proper cueing, while slack on the hole is a problem, so you take a tiny strip of masking tape and place it in the hole so it reduces its width.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:41PM (10 children)
When I was a teenager, we bought our first CD player and a few audio CDs for it. We all gathered around, hushed ourselves to hear better, even holding our breaths, when the first song played. And... it was clearly superior, way superior, to vinyl.
But there was a lot of hiss. Lot of early CDs were AAD (Analog, Analog, Digital mastering). Those were the worst for hiss. We soon got into the habit of checking for that. DDD was much better. ADD was pretty rare. I think I saw 1 or 2 of those. If any DAD was ever made (and why would there be?), I have never seen nor heard of it. Ultimately, the easiest path away from AAD was, if possible, have the music played again and digitally record it. Easy, for classical music, if the listener wasn't too fussy about which orchestra was performing. Impossible for classic rock in which some of the artists had died, or just aged enough they couldn't match the performances of their youths. Techniques improved, also, making AAD a lot better though still not quite as good as DDD.
I have found this revival of vinyl utterly baffling. We're beyond the CD now, with FLAC and mp3. Why would anyone want to jump back not 1 but 2 generations worth, and screw around with vinyl? Further, anyone who thinks vinyl fun or something, well, why not also revive cassette tape, and 8-track tape? Tape and record players are much higher maintenance than a solid state personal music player. And sound worse. And are much bulkier and far less portable. And more expensive.
I wonder if the next innovation will be a car radio that can play vinyl LPs. Car radio has been real stubborn about losing the CD player. Should have vanished 20 years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @07:57PM
Vinyl is tactile - it's actual physical groove that is the recorded music/sound.
Plus the large cover art.
Nah, it would be 8-track if anything nostalgic.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @01:04AM
>If any DAD was ever made (and why would there be?)
I know for sure some were made, electronic dance stuff in the early 90s mastered on DAT, published as vinyl and CD. Studio had an analog SSL board worth 5 ferraris. Synth outputs went to the SSL, voice from the sampler, so the first stage was effectively all D. A digidesign (now avid) pro tools was there too, and good sounding but just not as good as the SSL.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:08AM (2 children)
I have also found it entirely baffling. The only argument for vinyl I can see any merit in is the artwork one, because a 12" square format works quite well.
Apart from that everything about vinyl is worse, IMHO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2020, @12:45PM (1 child)
It's not your opinion, it just is. Sound quality is objectively worse, the dynamic range is worse, it's harder to store, takes up more space and is more likely to degrade by just existing and every time you play it, the sound quality gets worse. It's quite difficult to back them up, and in general the only upsides are impressing your hipster friends and the album art/liner notes.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @04:16PM
It is an item, which means it can be collected and given as a gift. Youngsters are fascinated by sound out of a groove (as we were fascinated by sound out of a laser, out of a pc, out of a compression algorhithm...), and connect with their elders. The MAFIAA sniffed the revival and devoted much media space.
As for the quality of the medium, the crystal clear digital goes to the shitty bluetooth speaker or hip headphones, which means the 70$ usb turntable might fare worse, but the 80s average hifi system is gonna hold up pretty well.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:11AM (1 child)
Car vinyl interface was done long ago. As for cassettes you can check out bandcamp / discogs many artists/labels release cassette only.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @04:25PM
yo dawg i heard you like vinyl in car so i put a needle on a model car so it can travel around while you travel around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDVz-XH_CZ8 [youtube.com]
I recall a smaller car doing the same stunt in the late 90s.
Wow and flutter? no, doppler.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:16PM (2 children)
the next new idiotic thing already hit. these idiots are buying $2000 wind-up watches. everyone who grew up with vinyl and wind-up watches, i was overjoyed when CDs and quartz watches came out. what's funny is anyone who actually knows vinyl well - like an audio engineer, will tell you that vinyl is only accurate in mono, because you have to do an insane amount of frequency compression for stereo. these idiot millenials forgot that part - they're buying stereo records.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:54PM (1 child)
Frequency compression? I'm not sure. Dynamic range, yep. But when the record is mono, the needle travels sideways. When the record is stereo, the needle travels also up down. Since there is less up down range than lateral range, and since they wanted backwards compatibility, the engineers came up with two pick ups at 45 degrees, mirrored. This imposes a limit on PHASE not frequency, you have to get the lows in phase or the needle will simply jump out. The highs also distort more IIRC. and a limit on dynamic range, again, not frequency. Frequency IMHO is only affected by linear speed, which depends on both the rpm and the distance of the groove from the center.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Friday September 18 2020, @04:24AM
frequency compression. as in look at a frequency graph, and compress that graph for certain frequencies. like the low frequency. like on an equalizer. like make the bass softer. like what the riia curve. like has been applied to every piece of audio cut onto a record since records were a thing.