Get ready for What Hi-Fi?'s Vinyl Week!

[What Hi-Fi?]

Here comes a week of special vinyl and turntable news, reviews and features in the build-up to Record Store Day...

Get ready for What Hi-Fi?'s Vinyl Week! : Read more

 

[djh1697]

Mr. T of Linn was correct when he said CD won't catch on. It took over 25 years for his prediction that CD won't catch on, streaming seems to win at the end of the day. Something no one could foresee in the mid 1980's

 

[12th Monkey]

I presume you're having a laarf - CD was the dominant music carrier for many, many years.

 

[nopiano]

It took over 25 years for CDs unimaginable success to wane, and be overtaken by streaming in revenue terms.

Infographic: From Tape to Tidal: 4 Decades of U.S. Music Sales

This chart shows U.S. music industry revenue since 1980 by format.

www.statista.com

Lots of facts on this website.

 

[djh1697]

I presume you're having a laarf - CD was the dominant music carrier for many, many years.

As a physical format, the humble LP has outlived the CD, CD was good for 25 years, my young children don't even know what a CD is, they know what an LP is, and they don't even live here! I agree that streaming is the way to go now. Mr T. said "CD won't catch on" people can't give them away now. I have two sources a Roon based streamer/DAC and a Pink Triangle turntable, which has always sounded better than a CD player. The later I got in the early 1980's, recently it has had the majikal hands of Peter Swain (Cymbiosis) doing some upgrades for me.

People bought more records in 2021 than any year since the 1990s

.

thevinylfactory.com

In the USA it is almost exponential growth in sales since 2005.

Infographic: Despite Comeback, Vinyl Is Still Far From Its Glory Days

This chart shows the rise in LP sales in the United States.

www.statista.com

 

[12th Monkey]

To say that what was the dominant music carrier for so many years 'didn't catch on' makes no sense. You're either misunderstanding that catching on doesn't mean lasting forever, or engaging in motivated reasoning. It'll be like saying that the cathode ray tube didn't catch on because it was replaced by other technologies.

Vinyl may be coming back, but as nopiano's graphic shows it's nowhere in comparison with streaming - I doubt it ever will be - and logically, vinyl's resurgence has nothing to do with CD's decline - it's the rise of streaming. I think you're also rather previous in saying that anything has outlived CD - sales in that chart still seem to be worth a similar amount to vinyl, and as vinyl is more expensive that may say little about units actually sold. I suspect CD will die, and that this may not be that far away, but it's not actually dead yet.

EDIT: This NME piece suggests that what I have just speculated at is correct - volume in cash terms will soon be greater in the UK for vinyl, but last year the UK still bought almost three times as many CDs as LPs.

UK vinyl sales set to overtake CDs in 2022 (nme.com)

Personally, I think unit sales rather than cash value is a more accurate barometer of a format's popularity.

 

[Hifiman]

If CDs did not catch on then why did Mr. T make a volte-face when Linn started making CD players?