CD Sales Continue To Plummet, Vinyl Records Soar

Lucas123 writes "Over the past four years, vinyl record sales have been soaring, jumping almost 300% from 858,000 in 2006 to 2.5 million in 2009, and sales this year are on track to reach new peaks, according to Nielsen Entertainment. Meanwhile, as digital music sales are also continuing a steady rise, CD sales have been on a fast downward slope over the same period of time. In the first half of this year alone, CD album sales were down about 18% over the same period last year. David Bakula, senior vice president of analytics at Nielsen Entertainment, said it's not just audiophiles expanding their collections that is driving vinyl record sales but a whole new generation of young music aficionados who are digging the album art, liner notes and other features that records bring to the table. 'The trend sure does seem sustainable. And the record industry is really doing a lot of cool things to not only make the format come alive but to make it more exciting for consumers,' Bakula said."

big freakin cds...

[mevets]

A 12" CD could hold about a dozen regular ones. Not only could you have big album art, but the spinning patterns would complement the bong quite nicely.

Re:I bet "The Industry" loves it....

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean cognitive dissonance?

Just further proves it's piracy

[noidentity]

This just further proves it's piracy as the cause. Every audiophile knows that vinyl records are far higher quality than CDs. Pirates can only make inferior digital recordings of vinyl, so they don't bother. Thus, they are forced to buy the vinyl records. Since we see many-fold increase in vinyl sales, we have a glimpse of what CD sales would be like without piracy. So, vinyl is literally a natural DRM that both protects the artists and ensures superior sound quality. Now, would you like to buy some Monster USB cables? Guaranteed to improve your typing and mouse speed.

Re:All well and good, until...

[h4rr4r]

We called it "Dubbing" instead of "making rips|ripping". We wore an onion on our belts while we did this, which was the style at the time.

Re:Cassette vs. CD

[antifoidulus]

are slipping to, something. *Gets my tin foil hat ready.*

Maybe beaming music directly into your tin foil hat?

Re:Missing from the summary...

[carlzum]

Don't be such a downer. My 401k dropped from $100,000 to $1, but now it's up to $5. I have to assume it will continue to grow at a 500% rate, so I'm going to retire a millionaire and vinyl will be the dominant music format again.

Wait for it...

[stealth_finger]

RIAA claims vinyl killing music industry!

Re:multi-track please

[Rod Beauvex]

Fuck no it doesn't need to be easier to remix songs. No one wants to hear the shitty drum beat you added to Tainted Love.

Re:Disco record sales

[MrEricSir]

Yes, but all those records were scratched up by hip-hop DJs in the mid 80's.

That's why we need to start making records again.

Argh

[SnowDog74]

God damned hipsters.