[Arny Krueger]

"Dick Pierce" wrote in message


Harry Lavo wrote:

Sales of vinyl albums have been climbing steadily for
several years, tromping on the notion that the rebound
was just a fad. Through late November, more than 2.1
million vinyl records had been sold in 2009, an increase
of more than 35 percent in a year, according to Nielsen
Soundscan. That total, though it represents less than 1
percent of all album sales, including CDs and digital
downloads, is the highest for vinyl records in any year
since Nielsen began tracking them in 1991. "

The same source quotes 2008 CD album sales at 428 million
units, and song downloads at 1 billion units. So,
attempting to compare 2008 apples to 2008 oranges, that's
428 million cd album sales vs 1.6 million vinyl record
sales, making vinyl sales account for 0.37%
of the total album market.

The executive summary is that "A rising tide lifts all boats".

Put it in a slightly different perspective, that's about
1.43 CDs for every person in the United states, vs. one
vinyl LP for every 188 persons.

Another perspective: assume $5 per CD and $10 per LP,
that's 2.1G$
for CD, and 0.024G$ for LP.

Considering that many of us can remember when the LP had close to 100%
market share, 0.37% seems like a massive fall from "grace"

How their data, as revealed, suggests that this is fueled
by purchases of the "iPod generation," is certainly a
stretch. Where's the breakdown by age, for example?

One irony is that there seems to be amazing amounts of interest in LPs among
people in their late 30s and early 40s. For many of us older folk, we
remember when the LP was all we had, and that can be amazingly effective
aversion therapy.

Further, there's no breakdown on how many of those sales
constitute new vs. resale/preowned product (in either
case, to be fair).

Given how often we see gleeful posts about "Amazing LP Finds" found at the
local Goodwill store, it seems like recycled product is a bigger segment of
the LP market. One of the keys to any market for used product is people who
want to discard the product in question. Listening to LPs surely makes me
want to discard them if I have a viable alternative.

But the noise in the CD data is larger by a lot than the
total LP sales.

One irony is that not too long ago, Vinyl was more like 1% of the total
market. Now its 0.37%. Where I come from, that's a 63% loss of market share.
Even though the actual numbers of product sold go up, the market share
appears to be continuing to all off a cliff.