Culture

RIAA: Vinyl Is Back!

by mtippett | April 30, 2008 at 09:37 am

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Frank Smith is always worth reading. Today he picked up an interesting tidbit on the state of the music business.

In the U.S. shipments of CDs were down 17.5 percent in 2007, while digital formats (such as MP3s) now account for 23 percent of U.S. recording revenues. This is up 16.1 percent from 2006 and 9 percent from 2005.

About 809.9 million digital songs were downloaded/sold in 2007, up 38 percent from 2006. Ringtones and other mobile music downloadable dealies were up 14.6 percent in 2007. There was an 85 percent increase in mobile music sales between 2005 and 2006.

Total U.S. digital and physical music shipments in 2007 were up 11.6 percent. However, the total retail value of those sales was down 11.8 percent from 2006.

In weird twist of fate, sales of albums in the LP/EP format (on vinyl) increased in 2007 by 36.6 percent compared to 2006. Vinyl sales declined from 2005 to 2006, leaving no expectations for a sudden rise in sales of the format.

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Jarrett Martineau

at 09:49 on April 30th, 2008

LP sales might be increasing, but the relatively high cost of producing vinyl albums is a huge barrier to achieving significant growth in their production and distribution, which is unfortunate...I would take the analog warmth of a record any day over the tinny thinness of an mp3.