Vinyl and Cassettes Aren't Dead After All
In an era increasingly dominated by music streaming, there has been plenty of talk about the “death” of physical formats like vinyl, CDs and tapes. Yet the numbers look brighter than people think.
While CD sales have had another terrible year, vinyl has been enjoying a revival and cassettes have been making a slow but steady comeback over the past few years. Based on an analysis of music-buying habits in the UK in recent years, Nielsen Music, a company that has been analysing music data since 1991, has published some surprising reports.
Vinyl sales keep breaking records
In fact, there is simply no better way to enjoy music than on vinyl! That's not bias, it's a proven fact. Putting a record on a turntable and listening to it will always be more satisfying than letting a streaming service “take” you from one playlist to the next with its algorithms.
The huge success of Record Store Day (held on a Saturday in April; this year it falls on 13 April) shows exactly how much interest there is in vinyl. Long queues of music fans wrapped around the area just for a chance to find the LPs they were looking for.
This enormous interest in vinyl is the main reason sales across the UK have risen steadily every year for the past decade. Vinyl sales are now at their highest since the early '90s, with more than 10% of all physical albums bought now on vinyl. In total, 4.2 million records were sold in the UK in 2018. Not bad for a format that was supposed to be “dead”.
Below is a chart showing the revival of vinyl records over the past decade:
CDs… out of luck
Although many people still use music players and CD players to enjoy music, over the past decade sales have plummeted from more than 112 million to just 32 million CDs. That is perhaps understandable given how fast technology keeps changing, and music streaming services have won over the majority with their many superior features.
But cassettes keep rising (slightly)
The big surprise, however, is that cassette sales in 2018 jumped 125.3% compared with 2017, reaching their highest level since 2004. Almost 50,000 cassette albums were bought last year, according to new figures from the British Phonographic Industry.
The best-selling cassette artist of 2018 was the rock band The 1975, whose latest album “A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships” sold 7,523 copies.
They were joined in the Top 10 by the legendary group The Prodigy (whose album “No Tourists” sold 2,148 copies), while both soundtracks of “Guardians of the Galaxy – Awesome Mix 1 & 2” stayed popular thanks to cross-promotion with the mixtape of Star-Lord, the character played by Chris Pratt in the Marvel films.
Of course, as with any story, the physical music market will still have plenty of ups and downs, but the upward trend of vinyl and cassettes may well continue for the next few years.
Source: Loop Central
