Records Outsell CD !

[PaulD]

Here are a couple of articles that are relevant, and might provide more perspective
https://observer.com/2016/02/why-vinyls-resurgence-wont-save-the-music-industry/
https://www.superdeluxeedition.com/feature/saturday-deluxe-18-january-2020/#more-155797

 

[Robin L]

Here are a couple of articles that are relevant, and might provide more perspective
https://observer.com/2016/02/why-vinyls-resurgence-wont-save-the-music-industry/
https://www.superdeluxeedition.com/feature/saturday-deluxe-18-january-2020/#more-155797

It certainly doesn't help that the discs the Boomer is checking out in the photo at the top of the first article are 78's.

 

[watchnerd]

I certainly doesn't help that the discs the Boomer is checking out in the photo at the top of the first article are 78's.

And packaged in a 78 "album" when that word actually made sense for the medium.

Too funny.

 

[watchnerd]

Microsoft Goove Music

I don't even know what this is.

 

[watchnerd]

Well my latest music purchase arrived today.

Copy of Antal Dorati's Mercury Living Presence recording of Kodaly's Harry Janos Suite.

 

[Taddpole]

CD probably still outselling vinyl but you can overcharge a lot more for vinyl and the cd has to be cheaper if US pricing is anything like the UK. That said I don't think vinyl revenues are as large outside US. Probably the most profitable for the industry per unit though.

Vinyl discs sold still far lower than 8 track and even cassette tapes sold in vinyls heyday.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Until streaming services learn how to handle Classical music and deliver comprehensive selection, CD (or SACD) is still the best medium for acquiring that genre of music.

This is the key thing for me too.
I was an early adopter of file based music almost 20 years ago now.
I worked away from home a lot and was looking for a way to take music with me that didn't involve a heavy flight case full of cassettes and a walkman.
The tagging systems have always been unsuited to classical music with primacy having been given to artist rather than composer so whilst auto tagging worked after a fashion I had to come up with my own system just so I could reasonably conveniently find what I want to listen to.
After 10 years of re-tagging every rip so it wasn't useless I gave up in a fit of pique and went back largely to CDs. The length of time it took to re-tag every rip is about 10 to 15 times longer than it takes me to get the CD from its shelf and play it.
Sadly classical music is an extreme minority interest overall.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Sure, if you insist on one particular performance of a piece. Otherwise, there are usually dozens, if not hundreds, of recordings to choose from. None of them will be exactly what was heard at the premiere anyway, so I fail to see the point in looking further than any well-made recording with a competent orchestra.

I disagree completely.
I buy for the performance, not the recording quality.
The idea that there are plenty of other recordings by competant orchestras it the position of an equipment fanatic not a music lover, which is fine, I suppose but totally wrong from my pov.

 

[Soniclife]

Sadly classical music is an extreme minority interest overall.

I've just been looking at the midyear report that is the source for this thread (link below), I hadn't realised how small classical is, at least in the US, it's the smallest genre. The split of how sales are across the genres is interesting.

The chart is ordered in sales volume, right to left as well.

https://static.billboard.com/files/2020/07/NielsenMID-YEAR-2020-us-1594300786.pdf

 

[mansr]

I disagree completely.
I buy for the performance, not the recording quality.
The idea that there are plenty of other recordings by competant orchestras it the position of an equipment fanatic not a music lover, which is fine, I suppose but totally wrong from my pov.

I think you misunderstood me. Equipment has nothing to do with it. There are hundreds of recordings of, say, Beethoven's symphonies. Although they are all slightly different, most of them provide, for me, a roughly equivalent musical experience unless they are objectively bad performances in some way. A few are probably special, whether through unusual arrangements or exotic recording locations. Such recordings can be interesting, but for the most part, I'm quite happy listening to a "standard" performance, and there is no need to scour the used CD market for those.

 

[Feanor]

This is the key thing for me too.
I was an early adopter of file based music almost 20 years ago now.
I worked away from home a lot and was looking for a way to take music with me that didn't involve a heavy flight case full of cassettes and a walkman.
The tagging systems have always been unsuited to classical music with primacy having been given to artist rather than composer so whilst auto tagging worked after a fashion I had to come up with my own system just so I could reasonably conveniently find what I want to listen to.
After 10 years of re-tagging every rip so it wasn't useless I gave up in a fit of pique and went back largely to CDs. The length of time it took to re-tag every rip is about 10 to 15 times longer than it takes me to get the CD from its shelf and play it.
Sadly classical music is an extreme minority interest overall.

I completely agree that tagging for Classical, (in particular), is very inadequate and inconsistent on metadata databases. However I'll never go back to spinning "silver discs"; everything I have is ripped to lossless computer files, (mostly FLAC). I use metadata tags exclusively to search and organize in my Window music player, Foobar2000.

For tag editing I mostly use Tag & Rename, though there are others.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I think you misunderstood me. Equipment has nothing to do with it. There are hundreds of recordings of, say, Beethoven's symphonies. Although they are all slightly different, most of them provide, for me, a roughly equivalent musical experience unless they are objectively bad performances in some way. A few are probably special, whether through unusual arrangements or exotic recording locations. Such recordings can be interesting, but for the most part, I'm quite happy listening to a "standard" performance, and there is no need to scour the used CD market for those.

No I think I understood what you meant, and this post confirms it.
We are in disagreement, but thats fine.

 

[mansr]

No I think I understood what you meant, and this post confirms it.

What does it confirm? How does anything I said relate in any way to equipment?

 

[Zensō]

Unfortunately for the CD, it inhabits the no man’s land between the nostalgia of the LP and the practicality of the streaming service. It loses on both fronts.

 

[PaulD]

I have to admit to buying both great performances and excellent recordings. Rarely do the two coincide. I love the Suske Quartette's late Beethoven quartettes, but recorded in the 70's in East Germany... I also love Janos Starker's Bach cello suites, recorded on Mercury Living Presence (1960s?), but he played one for me in his hotel room in the 1980s so I have a soft spot for him. Also I like both Bernstein's Beethoven 9 and Claudio Abado's. There are better recordings of all of these, and probably I most recently purchased the DG Rattle Beethoven set, superbly recorded, but Abado's (using crossed figure 8 mics) is better to listen to despite the lack of LF (fig-8 mics have LF rolloff), a fantastic performance with the same band, and superb imaging.

Sometimes I listen to the wonderful recordings, but mostly I listen to the better performances. My mind can fill in the sound easier than the performance differences. I suspect that we are all different in that way!

 

[Zensō]

3.5)Holy Cow Soundcloud! I wonder what they did to drive that growth. Have to go check them out...

SoundCloud is primarily being used by unsigned artists to promote their music. It’s not really a streaming service in the model of Spotify, Apple Music, et al. I don’t remember the exact details now, but they made changes to their terms in 2019 which resulted in significant numbers of users of their free tier moving onto their paid tiers. It also triggered an exodus to BandCamp.

 

[Zensō]

Y'all are going to be real shocked when the reel to reel tape resurgence keeps building over the next 10 years.

 

[garbulky]

I wasn't speaking of tactile.

I was speaking of the kind of intentional sonic coloration attempts you're alluding to.

People think it does change the sound though clearly not like vinyl can.

 

[KaiserSoze]

From what I can see there are a lot of millennials that are not necessarily wannabe hipsters that are buying vinyl because they think it gives them better sound quality than digital sources including CD. Try persuading one of these millennials that for them CD is probably a better choice and they won't believe you. Doesn't matter that many of us (non audiophiles) came up through the ranks with the pops and scratches of vinyl and greeted the advent of the CD format with a sigh of relief. Somewhere there's a marketing machine at work which is driving the sales of the same old music across different formats. The music industry likely sees vinyl as a way to beat the digital revolution and take back control of their profits. Good luck to them but count me out. Been there, done that, not going back!

The thing about those millennials is that they just don't like anything new. They buy their casual clothes at thrift stores. It is a sub-culture that believes that newness is equivalent to badness. They don't seem to have figured out a rational scheme for determining whether a particular new thing should be thrown in with all the other new things under the "bad new thing" heading, or embraced. The notable exception where they seem to have figured this out is with hybrid cars, which is the only kind of new car that many of them would buy. But for most everything else, if it is new it is bad. The reason for this attitude, as best as I can make sense of it, is that they have been made hyperaware of the ongoing destruction of the home planet, which is reasonably equated with excessive consumption, and newness is a conspicuous sign of excessive consumption. So except for when there is a clear reason to accept a new thing as not furthering the destruction of the planet, it is rejected. After this goes on for long enough, it becomes dogmatic, to where there is backlash from peers whenever something new has been selected when something old would be deemed as good as anyone really needs. Analog vinyl is older than digital discs, and analog vinyl is deemed as good as anyone really needs, therefore analog vinyl is preferred.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Any day now, the Ventures will be back in vogue again. Any day now. Any day. Just wait and see. Ye of little faith.