Thursday, April 30, 2015

Back to Black: Vinyls and the Economy

Back to Black: Vinyls and the Economy
Throughout the decades ways to listen to music has changed. From LP’s and vinyls, to tapes and CD’s then to downloading music and now vinyls are making a sudden comeback in the music industry. In the 1990’s vinyls made their first revival, but why the second revival within the past couple years?

In today’s world we live in a digital age. Everything can be done with technology. Immersed in this digital age, we always look forward to the future to see what new innovation will be coming next. While some are looking forward to the future, some are visiting the past with vinyls.The first revival in the 1990’s was largely driven by dance music. Once the first revival ended sales went down again until about 2008. At this point 2 million records were being sold per year and continued to grow until 2011 when it hit 4 million sold per year. With these sales the music industry was bringing in only $125 million. Most sales were old classical records that were resales, therefore they were selling for a lot of money.

CD sales for the year of 2014 were down again, mostly due to online downloads, which left vinyl sales in the spotlight for music sales. Configuration shows that sales of vinyls grew by fifty- two percent in 2014 to 9.2 million copies, up from 6.1 million in 2013 (Caulfield). Along with those number, ninety- four albums sold about 10,000 vinyls. To compare numbers, in 2004, only 0.2 percent of all music was sold on vinyl. In 2014, 3.6 percent of music was being sold on vinyls. By looking at these numbers you can see vinyl sale has gone up, and it is still rising.

If sales keep rising, the economy will keep bringing in more money. As you can see in the first graph below, record sales are up from about one million in 1997 to six million in 2013. In correspondence to these numbers, the second graph shows how much money vinyls have made each year. Two years ago in 2013, selling vinyls made the music industry 218 million dollars. That was two years ago. By now the music industry probably brings in a lot more money selling vinyls than two years ago. If the vinyl stays, the music industry could bring in more money than they ever had in the past.



Caulfield, Keith. "Vinyl Album Sales Hit Historic High in 2014, Again."Billboard. N.p., 31 Dec. 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.

"Unbound: Your Life, Your Voice, Your World." Unbound. N.p., 26 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.

Safo, Nova. "Vinyl Record Sales Have Jumped to 6 Million." Vinyl Record Sales Have Jumped to 6 Million. N.p., 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.

"Back to Black." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 20 Aug. 2011. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.

12 comments:

  1. I can see why interest is coming back in vinyls. They are just cooler than CDs and it seems classier. One day I hope to own all Kanye West albums on vinyl. So the motivation is there for people to continue buying vinyl so I don't see this trend dying any time soon.

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  2. People like analog music formats (vinyl LPs and cassettes) because they bring an entirely different listening experience. They have a warmer sound and a slight bit of distortion. In comparison, digital CDs and files have more neutral sound and can suffer from compression. Analog formats also bring nostalgia, even to those who weren't around when vinyl was in its prime. Plus, it's cool to have a 12" record because you can look at all the artwork and liner notes. I think paying a bit extra for that is worth it.

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  3. It is interesting how vinyls are making a comeback. Some people might think that because it is so easy to access music digitally, physical copies of the music would become less popular. However, your article would prove them wrong. I wonder high the vinyl sales will climb and if they will fall again. I can see why people would be interested in collecting records again because it is very different to have a copy of the music on a record compared to a file on a computer.

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  4. There is a lot to say about human's wanting things they can no longer get. So when vinyl started shrinking the demand grew until production was back yet again. It'd be cool to have the ability to play music from a record player and just hear a sound that I didn't grow up with. I was in the era of cassettes. Now it's digital. IN the 21st century there is a huge drive in the economy from human nostalgia.

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  5. One reason I see the sales being higher than CD's is that you can download the music online and burn them to a disk, but with vinyl you have to buy them in that format.

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  6. It's interesting to see the great increase in older items, such as vinyls, this is probably due to this 'hipster' era that we are going through, while this is good news for the music industry, I just don't understand why people feel the need to buy music, especially vinyls, a form of music playing that many people don't even have the secondary part to actually play the music, when it's so easy to just download music for free off of the internet. Now, I'm not saying that people should do this illegal action of free music downloads, but there are so many other, more efficient ways of downloading music, in my own opinion.

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  7. A plausible cause for this sudden growth in popularity, could relate to members of the generation of humans from the vinyl record era feeling a sense of nostalgia or desire to relive the experience of playing these records. By purchasing and playing these records, younger generations are viewing this and deem it as the popular thing to do hence causing more individuals to purchase more of these vinyl records. Most likely this trend will continue, until another outdated device such as cassettes receive the same amount of attention.

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  8. I suppose the increase in vinyl sales could be a combination of the richer, deeper sound quality you get from a physical vinyl record as well as the pushback against the digital music industry, one which charges money left and right. However, vinyls aren't cheap either and take awhile to be produced, shipped, and received. The industry, one which has not seen much action for decades, will have difficulty getting back into the swing of things, hoping that the surge in sales is more than a fad.

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  9. I never thought that vinyls would go away entirely, but I definitely didn’t expect the sales to be increasing. Any song you could possibly want can now be downloaded so to a lot of people it seems like cd’s and and lp’s are pretty useless. There are really only a few reasons people still listen to vinyls. Reason 1 would be that they’re stuck in the past and refuse to move on; sort of like my parents sometimes. Reason 2 would be that they think the sound quality is better, which I don't really get considering you can’t change the volume. And if you can change that volume, that’s something I haven’t figured out how to do on a record player. The last reason people would prefer lp’s over their itunes music library would be because they’re trying to be cool or hipster. If bose speakers and beats pills are too typical for you, the only way to go is with vinyls.

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  10. It makes sense that the sales of vinyl record would be increasing as some people would like to try and get away from the digital world that they live in today. Now that just about all things today are digitized and can be obtained by downloading, there are some people that would like to just get away from technology and use something that can't be downloaded and is a blast from the past.

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  11. I didn't know vinyls were having this huge comeback, but I've seen shows like American Picker where some records could be worth a lot of money. I think it will be hard for consumers to have a high demand for vinyls because you can't listen to vinyls in your car or while you go for a walk. They are not portable which would cause some issues for our impatient generation that wants everything now and as fast as possible, but as we grow older it might become a more high class kind of activity,

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  12. I think it’s really interesting that vinyl records have become a popular thing again. Having music on vinyl has become more of a trend because they’ve suddenly become cool to have which is a good example of change in consumer taste. Everyone has digital music so now people are seeking new ways to listen to it which actually involves dipping into the past. It’s also crazy to that in 2013 the number of vinyl records sold was almost closing in on the number of cd’s sold.

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