What's amazing was the cassette was strong for many years as vinyl collapsed but nothing could stop the popularity of the CD. But look what's happened recently with the now collapse of the CD and the rise of the Internet.

More sad and horrifying than I can express.

What would be really interesting for that chart is if you could plot the total sales by format to see the overall total sales of the industry during that period, so people could see the correlation between the rise of the internet, and sales falling off the same cliff.

Jason

This is a few years old, but close to what you want.



More info and charts here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-ch ... try-2011-2

i don't know for sure how all of you feel, but i cannot even listen to the sound of the stylus touching the record, let alone an entire album side on vinyl...............fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Thanks, Jeff.

This chart is downright scary. When you think of people migrating from vinyl to cassette, and then migrating from both formats to CD, and then all of the remastered CD's being purchased by music aficionados, I have to think that the average first issue sales number historically is about $35-$40 / person, and we're now down 30% from that. And I don't see any sign of that changing, since tech doesn't do anything but get better - the combination of streaming, lossless tech, the cloud, and faster internet speeds means the quality of the digital formats will do nothing but improve. So physical media, except as a collector's format, is probably doomed.

But the question is, do you think that missing 30% is truly theft (so the total number of units "acquired" are the same, or are we losing a chunk of the actual music buying public on a per capita basis? My musical tastes aren't mainstream enough to know, and I don't think punk and metal are representative, being disproportionately physical media so they can be sold at gigs, from what I can tell.

Jason

P.S. If the per capita average is $40 / person / year, ICE just might be bigger than Amazon...

I think it adds something to jazz and blues, especially the old stuff recorded for 78's, but for most genres, yeah, gimme the CD, please.

Jason

I read a study a few years ago that said, while total sales were down, so were the total number of releases from the majors (as I recall, it focused on the majors). The study said that sales per release were steady or even up.

The focus on just sales doesn't take into account what the competition really is. It's not as simple as buy an album vs. don't buy an album. Now it's buy an album vs. buy a DVD vs. download a TV show vs. buy a game, etc.

Funny part is I'm seeing more and more vinyl pop up. I was in FYE and Books A Million and both stores have a fair size vinyl section. I've read many music purist claim it has a better and warmer sound than other formats.

yeah, but what I fear with that is DVD / Game / TV doesn't lead to a large collective / communal experience. Sure they're shared, but the fewer people who buy music, the fewer who are likely to go to concerts, and that's even more important that the album sales for the artists - and I think for the fabric of the industry as a whole. Plus, I think the lack of people going to live music strikes me as a irreplaceable loss to society, in a lot of ways that are hard to explain.

I also think the fewer artists thing plays into that as well; the music co's are no longer willing to let artists find their feet. If you're not a pop star right out of the gate, they don't have time for you, which is hollowing out the mid-tier of the working touring bands.

Man, I feel like a grumpy old man tonight. I guess it's just because here in Toronto, I'm not seeing very many bands in that 12-20 year old range that are capable of playing to 10,000-20,000. Since I think both Grunge and the late 90's rock revival fizzled out, we're missing a couple of touring generations of rock bands. Aside from the Foos, Coldplay, QOTSA, and Jack White, I can't think of many.

Jason

P.S. I before E except after C isn't good for society.

I can't believe I've lived through the vinyl and tape years and then the beginning and end of the CD that once seemed like a miracle. But 55 years is a long time for technology. Most of us were lucky to have seen the golden age of music.

One of the things that concerns me is how many more people seem to be taking that attitude that if the live experience doesn't sound exactly like the record, it's inferior. I've never understood that mindset - live is an entirely different animal, and it's where a musician really proves himself. If you want to hear something that sounds like the record, there's something called...the record. The live experience is about living in the moment - what that exact combination of artist, audience, time, place and attitude does to the music. It exists only in that moment, and can only exist in that moment. Even if there's a pristine recording of the event, it's a pale imitation of being there and experiencing it live.

Germany in the late 1800's might have been cool to be, too.

Jason

Agreed - and while Metal isn't as bad as pop is for that (lord, save me from backing tracks and lip synching), the metal fans even see the instrumental breaks and bridges are part of the song, so aside from the various solos and maybe some vocal variants, the song is the song. Although I did think Robert Plant did a great job rearranging the Zeppelin stuff he did, he's, well, Robert Plant, not some jumped up bar band.

But that inflexibility I think comes from a lack of live exposure - it is one of those negatives I mentioned.

Jason

If big acts didn't cost a small fortune to go see, I would go to more concerts. Are there trends showing that concert-going is in decline?

I keep hearing about the death of the CD (this has been going on for nearly a decade) and yet, last year I read a report that of music sales, a very high percentage of them were on CD.

I know vinyl and downloads are the hipster thing, but the fact that CDs are still being made and sold (albeit not like they were over a decade ago), tells me that someone's buying them.

And it's not just Jimbo.

The thing is all music sales are down as seen on the chart, even digital will never reach the height of year 2000's 71 million dollars. On that chart CDs had dropped to about 15 million as of 2009, I would imagine that number has really dipped now.

I think most people really don't care about music and certainly do not buy music (except Adele fans).
They listen casually from their devices and that's that.

I didn't really find any over time trends, but I did find an interesting presentation from 2012. It covers sports, concerts, and other live events. What's really concerning is that the average income of a concert goer is $75K, and the average age is 42. That skews too old and too rich for me to think it's healthy. Although, the minimal band cover I pay now is about $15, so I can definitely see it becoming a rich person's game.

http://www.slideshare.net/LiveAnalytics ... 2-26394460

you could probably build something out of Live Nation's annual reports, since they do number of tickets sold and revenue, but's a Saturday morning, and I don't feel like crunching all those numbers. Too close to what I do for a living

Jason

I'm afraid it's a mushroom cloud model, though - a large pool of current buyers supporting a greater percentage of sales, with nothing underneath it. The people who buy physical media in their late 20's and early 30's will buy it for life. But like with cable, millenials aren't getting into the habit of buying physical product (cord nevers) so there will be a minimum age at which people buy CD's, with no one in the younger demos buying them. And as that population ages, sure we may keep buying, but the new artists will focus on reaching the online demographics, and once the older generations stop buying, physical sales won't just decline, they'll vanish.

my 0.02

Jason

Other than the odd box set or rarity, I don't buy CDs anymore either (sorry. ). I pay Google and cultivate and maintain a larger library than I had before. I realize I'm not buying the music though, I'm renting it. For listening in my car and while I'm on my computer (the only time I get to listen to music these days anyway) it's more than adequate.

My dream would be some kind of FLAC service to eliminate any compression on the music files, but for my uses it's ok the way it is for now. As bandwidth and drive capacities increase we'll see more and more services offering uncompressed audio, IMO. Looking forward to that. Alternately, due to bandwidth caps and increased licensing costs these services will prove unsustainable and I'll be buying a TON of CDs in the future!

Remember when you could walk into a store and buy a real stereo? It's even tough to find a dedicated CD player anymore unless it's audiophile. And new cars will now be sold without CD players.