07-19-2019, 08:38 AM
[quote pid='44551' dateline='1561977313']
Vinyl-record sales peaked in 1978, cassettes in 1990, recorded music altogether in 1999 (and by then the music CD and DVD utterly dominated as sales of vinyl records and cassettes had all but disappeared from the market). downloads not overtaking music DVDs and CDs until about 2014 and themselves starting to fade, with streams now the biggest part of expenditures of purchases of recorded music.
No allowance for inflation is recognized. Purchase of a $6.98 vinyl disc in 1978 may have been a more expensive real purchase than a $15.98 CD in 1998. Only in 1985 did CD purchases overtake vinyl (but not cassettes, probably dedicated heavily to car stereo) and only in 1990 did CDs overtake cassettes. By 2002 the recorded cassette all but completely disappeared from the market, and it has yet to return. In 2017, streaming was #1 in purchases, with downloads and CDs nearly tied for #2, vinyl still a small share of the market with a few devotees (it looks like a fad), music videos people actually paying for never having been a large market, and recorded cassettes 'dead and buried' as a share of the market.
I suspect that many of the vinyl purchases of the 1970s were replacements of older vinyl LPs that had been damaged due to warping or bad needles. Compact discs still have some viability as a market, but notice that they are much more difficult to destroy.
I recall Blu-Ray being touted as a storage system for recorded music, although there seems to be "4D" storage for video even more advanced. I suspect that the Powers That Be in the business of recorded music (the dinosaurs of the recorded music industry itself) are chary of using a medium that can store huge amounts of music on one disc. Obviously the sound quality would be extremely good -- but compact discs that have about an hour of music would lose such viability as they now have. Remember well: in contemporary America, profit is the only virtue and the only constraint is that the business must not hurt the customer. Such can slow the availability of a technology in a monopolized business.
[/quote]
Vinyl-record sales peaked in 1978, cassettes in 1990, recorded music altogether in 1999 (and by then the music CD and DVD utterly dominated as sales of vinyl records and cassettes had all but disappeared from the market). downloads not overtaking music DVDs and CDs until about 2014 and themselves starting to fade, with streams now the biggest part of expenditures of purchases of recorded music.
No allowance for inflation is recognized. Purchase of a $6.98 vinyl disc in 1978 may have been a more expensive real purchase than a $15.98 CD in 1998. Only in 1985 did CD purchases overtake vinyl (but not cassettes, probably dedicated heavily to car stereo) and only in 1990 did CDs overtake cassettes. By 2002 the recorded cassette all but completely disappeared from the market, and it has yet to return. In 2017, streaming was #1 in purchases, with downloads and CDs nearly tied for #2, vinyl still a small share of the market with a few devotees (it looks like a fad), music videos people actually paying for never having been a large market, and recorded cassettes 'dead and buried' as a share of the market.
I suspect that many of the vinyl purchases of the 1970s were replacements of older vinyl LPs that had been damaged due to warping or bad needles. Compact discs still have some viability as a market, but notice that they are much more difficult to destroy.
I recall Blu-Ray being touted as a storage system for recorded music, although there seems to be "4D" storage for video even more advanced. I suspect that the Powers That Be in the business of recorded music (the dinosaurs of the recorded music industry itself) are chary of using a medium that can store huge amounts of music on one disc. Obviously the sound quality would be extremely good -- but compact discs that have about an hour of music would lose such viability as they now have. Remember well: in contemporary America, profit is the only virtue and the only constraint is that the business must not hurt the customer. Such can slow the availability of a technology in a monopolized business.
[/quote]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.