Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running

CDs are just digital files plus waste. Vinyl is a musical ritual.

What is everyone's opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?

I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.

Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.

But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.

How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?

And I bet horse carriages outsold the Ford Model-T this year too

Because CD is a medium for data shrinking in popularity and vinyl is a token of being cool growing in popularity, of course it does.

Just waiting for wax cylinders to come back

I want to know what “other” is that is also clobbering CDs. Can’t say it’s streaming because it’s physical media. The article mentions that half a million cassettes were sold, but that doesn’t really answer the question. That “other” takes up a lot of space relative to CDs so I’m pretty curious.

I knew piracy was eating into music sales but poor artists and distributors only generating less than $2 of revenue in the US per year? That’s like 1 CD in a clearance sale. They should start a charity.

If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.

I'm more curious about who's still selling music on cassette and who's willing to buy it.

Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs.

Vinyl is definitely overpriced these days. I do love all the art and care that artists seem to put into their vinyl releases, but typically I'm spending $30-$50 on a new vinyl release. But what am I going to do? Not buy that limited edition colored vinyl gatefold with art and lyric pages?

Wow. What is that ‘other’ physical medium? Is MiniDisc also coming back and beating CDs?

A whole $1.91!! Wow!

yeah, because if you buy something digitally, it will get stolen from you.

Vinyls are great, but I can't copy them to my phone so I still have to buy a CD with it.

I don't really buy vinyl to listen to it, but for the larger cover art and liner notes

One of my favorite things about vinyl is having to flip the record over. I think it demands more active and respectful listening.

That's because it's getting harder to find CD's plus the majority of people buy digital

I was thinking about investing in a vinyl player recently and was really sad to learn Vinyl is actually worse for audio quality. The standard thickness of the disk is a physical limitation for frequencies which means the sound gets "squished."

I wanna go even further than retro. Gimme the hottest new single on wax cylinder for my phonograph..

This is only new vinyl, right? In my town, used records are king, by far. In fact, I probably buy 10+ used records for every new record.

Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style. I realize vinyl is a great and unique user experience with a specific timber, and more enjoyable to collect.

It's kind of funny when you hear about the "analog warmth" when albums were being digitally mastered as early as the late 70s... And pretty much all re-releases are digitally remastered.

I'm a music collector and saw this coming. "Music" went from a product you buy, into a service you pay to gain access to. You don't pay for music, you pay daddy Spotify for access to HIS music.

Vinyl has turned back into the only form of physical music collection.

Hm. "do you want 2 vinyl nuts" doesn't have the same ring to it.

This is dumb. Just going to be used for collectors editions with different songs and shit.

To each their own I guess.

Poeple jerking off CDs here dont understand down sampling and the average quality of CDS. they think that just because it is digitally mastered that it therefore must be the master that is put on CDS, its not.

Something something piracy doesnt matter, something something make a good product at a fair price, something something provide convenience. What was i talking about again?

Okay, is it just me or is the total global revenue for physical media music less than $2 USD a year? I must be reading it wrong.

Hipsters paying 2-3x as much for a vinyl LP which objectively has worse audio quality than a CD.

concidering walmart doesn't sell normal cd players in store but does sell record players, I'm not surprized.

Legit didn't know people still bought music. CDs though? How does anyone still have cd players, and why. Vinyl is a hipster fad now so I guess that explains records.

It's to bad there's no good record players made anymore. Or cassette decks. It's all the cheap bottom of the barrel mechanisms now. No quality Japanese equipment like there used to be.

why have streaming and not radio?

CD fans right now:

I feel like I am the only person who still buys MP3 files direct.

We've had a vinyl resurgence and now I'm waiting for the CD resurgence.

Vinyls are purely treasured for their resell value.

CDs are this odd junction between quality, inconvenience, and low cost, one that makes it niche. They are a physical product and thus higher quality, so to speak, than digital music. Yet vinyls are higher quality (in the hand) and more novel due to the design options. Then they are lossless but even personally ripping is far less convenient than digital music, much less inserting the disc with every use. The others combined— a vinyl copy for display and pirating/a lossless streaming service like Qobuz or Apple’s— costs more for what can be seen as a minimal improvement in the other categories.

So I’m not surprised. Vinyls are a neat little souvenir of songs or albums I enjoy, and though I’ve never actually played a single one, they’re still something I like to collect. Can’t say the same for CDs.

Can’t beat analog audio. A lot of newer releases are mastered digitally anyways so sometimes it’s not worth buying those on vinyl. I prefer to get some older albums on vinyl because there’s some shit you can’t hear in the streaming versions of certain tracks. CDs are a pass for me, they are basically just flat USB drives.