You are looking at this as a CD vs Vinyl battle. Vinyl found a niche and never died entirely. Now CDs are dying because of downloads and streaming and you're saying "why the resurgence vinyl?"
There is no resurgence, perhaps a Renaissance in vinyl, but what you're really seeing is just the fall of CD down to vinyl's levels.
Including both and just looking without inflation, it’s above 1989 levels and could hit 1988 levels eventually. It’s 5x higher than mid 90s through late 00s. Almost 4x since 2010.
Take out vinyl singles and the increase is absurd. It’s 9x to 40x+ increase from any year between 1991 and 2007. 8x from 2008. Almost 2x from 2013.
And this is all for 2018 figures. 2019 will bump things up even more. Though the pace has slowed a lot.
Even if you add inflation, the resurgence is still there. IE for LP/EP, 2019 will beat out 1989. After a low of nearly 25x less in 93 and 05-06.
> Even if you add inflation, the resurgence is still there. IE for LP/EP, 2019 will beat out 1989.
I'm having trouble viewing those graphs on mobile but it looks like in 1989 vinyl only had >4% market share and 34.6 million units, where as in 2018 it had >3% with 16.7 million units.
It's not nothing and it's not a large part of the overall market. It appears to be smaller than 30 years ago when it was considered a dead format.
I can be convinced otherwise as statistics isn’t a strength of mine, but those two numbers are by units.
Unit share doesn’t seem to make sense as a comparison point to me. A single or ringtone shouldn’t be given equal respect to a full collection of songs. Downloaded singles are 75% of the unit market share but only 5% of the revenue market share in 2018. 2018 will be the last year downloaded singles have a greater revenue share than vinyl.
To me this looks like a resurgence because of how its revenue share has been. Its collapse of market and revenue share from ~83 to ~92 and being dead by 89 (with 3.3% revenue share, less than the past 5 years if including 2019). Having a revenue share of 0.1% from 93 to 07. Yeah, for 25 years it’s revenue share was 0.1%. Then ~1.5% for the next 5-6 years and ~4.5% for the past couple of years.
It’s not a crazy resurgence, but compared to 93 to ~2012, a 25 year span, it’s many multiples higher and not looking to let up for now.
I agree that unit shares don't make sense, I was referencing the volume % which seems less absurd. The % of volume that LP had in 2018 was similar to the late % in the 80s. My point was that in the late 80s vinyl was "dead" and it's still "dead".
But it’s not dead in the same way. The resurgence has it stabilized and growing a bit still. In 89 it was on a 5 year drastic downtrend.
Now it’s on a tear compared to 93 to 07 and beyond.
There’s active communities online and in real life of people who like vinyl and are buying it. Though there were always enthusiasts. The buying part wasn’t happening from 93 to 07. If you can run a successful business off something that isn’t trending down, without the biz being too crazy, then the thing isn’t really dead. It’s niche sure. But dead wouldn’t make sense. Cassettes are dead. Paying for ringtones are dead. Those two aren’t close to vinyl.
Vinyl didn't die entirely because it was the latest development in mass produced analog media for music (tape was impractical and too costly outside of control rooms or rich people living rooms, and cassettes were too inferior), therefore it defined an era.
The CD is dying because it's not the latest development in mass produced digital media for music, and it's just being substituted by other means of doing the same thing, so that it's not going to hit the same memories.
Panta Rei and history repeats, so one day we might experience a new paradigm shift, for example if we'll record our music -plus the induced feelings of it- on implantable organic neural networks, so that someone will say "hah, those kids and their inferior analog implant... I'll rather go get some old compact discs to feel how it sounded the real thing!".
There is no resurgence, perhaps a Renaissance in vinyl, but what you're really seeing is just the fall of CD down to vinyl's levels.