Life&Culture

Vinyl record sales surpassed CDs for the first time since the 1980s

September 15, 2020 23:54·
Records

Records

As Bloomberg reports, it's the first time since 1986 that vinyl has been higher than CDs in America.

These times of vinyl records turned into a nostalgic versions of yesteryear have long gone.

The growth is nothing new for vinyl, of course, as a new generation of record collectors and a boom in portable record player sales has led to growth of the format in every year since 2005.

First-half music industry revenues increased 5.6% to $5.7 billion with paid streaming subscriptions fueling the growith, more than offsetting revenue declines in other areas of the USA recorded music market, according to the RIAA's annual mid-year report. It was that enthusiasm for collecting that helped vinyl completely surpass (and nearly double) CDs in these 6 months: $232.1 million in music sales for vinyl, to only $129.9 million for CDs.

"Vinyl documents, also called" records pressed wax", were commonplace prior to other formats, including cassette tapes and CDs, be the favored way of listening to audio. Subscription streaming revenues for first-half 2020 were up 14% to $3.8b vs.a comparable period in 2019. But that hasn't stopped vinyl records from making a resurgence. Concerts and visits to music stores have all but disappeared. Streaming, that comprises the earnings of compensated streaming, ad-supported loading and streaming radio, climbed 12percent to $4.8 billion through the first six weeks of 2020, RIAA discovered.

NVIDIA to acquire Arm Holdings for $40 billion from SoftBank
SoftBank will remain committed to Arm's long-term success through its ownership stake in NVIDIA , expected to be under 10 percent. I'd not be surprised if the deal is killed sometimes in 2021, as we've seen in the past with Qualcomm trying to acquire NXP.

Regardless of the stunted development of bodily earnings, songs streaming has continued to flourish.

For streaming services only, more and more listeners are willing to pay to play.

It streams the dominant music format, accounting for more than 85% of the music industry's revenue.

So far, overall music industry sales have grown 5.6%, mainly driven by streaming, for a total of $5.7 billion during the first six months of this year, alone.

Recommended News

Join The Conversation

We are pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news.
Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper.
Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.