CDs were announce in 1979, the same year my Yamaha CR-2040 and YP-D10 was manufactured, and I was almost done with school. Life started to happen for me, very impressionable youth, that was me. You can see those on my other postings, if you care to. Abba was first out the gate with a CD album release, the visitors. A short few years later, Vinyl was pronounced dead.
Restoring the old Yamaha system, made me think about the Vinyl situation. Reading all the posts on here, and seeing the lack of young people (yes it’s a generalisation but nothing indicates otherwise that I could find or see) interested in Vinyl, made me wonder about the format.
Why did this happen? Well reasons. Marketing and big money. CD players were not expensive, CD media was much smaller and from a manufacturing standpoint, more efficient, so mo profits. It was the disruptive innovator, and left Vinyl for dead in as far as the consumer was concerned. The exciting new digital, exact replica, format everybody had to have. Much more convenient, smaller, better quality, indestructible and does not degrade with use in the same way Vinyl does.
Well what is wrong with Vinyl? We all know, Vinyl degrade with use, it gets dirty and scratches. It’s a schlep in the modern world of remote controls and instant gratification. You have to get up and clean the damn LP, then cue it up, walk back and sit down to listen. Wanna skip a track, yea right, get up lift the stylus, move it and put it down again, walk back and sit down to listen. Want to prepare dinner and listen to music, you interrupt yourself constantly to attend the record. Play 45’s, me thinks not.
Yet more nails in the coffin of LPs when iTunes were introduced. Even more when later Spotify entered the scene in 2008. But then suddenly, CD sales started to decline since 2008…. Many forumites posted about SQ of various formats, about CD and Vinyl sales on here. FamilyDog posted recently that Vinyl sales exceeded CD sales in 2022. Many on here is passionate about Vinyl.
The bulk of users today streams more music than sales of CDs, remembering that a few hundred Billion CDs exist in the World, and countless Vinyl LPs and 45s. More and more online services sprung up, the lockdown shut down physical shops and online became a real revolution, even in SA. So now most people just rent the songs, they do no longer buy them.
Part 2
Restoring the old Yamaha system, made me think about the Vinyl situation. Reading all the posts on here, and seeing the lack of young people (yes it’s a generalisation but nothing indicates otherwise that I could find or see) interested in Vinyl, made me wonder about the format.
Why did this happen? Well reasons. Marketing and big money. CD players were not expensive, CD media was much smaller and from a manufacturing standpoint, more efficient, so mo profits. It was the disruptive innovator, and left Vinyl for dead in as far as the consumer was concerned. The exciting new digital, exact replica, format everybody had to have. Much more convenient, smaller, better quality, indestructible and does not degrade with use in the same way Vinyl does.
Well what is wrong with Vinyl? We all know, Vinyl degrade with use, it gets dirty and scratches. It’s a schlep in the modern world of remote controls and instant gratification. You have to get up and clean the damn LP, then cue it up, walk back and sit down to listen. Wanna skip a track, yea right, get up lift the stylus, move it and put it down again, walk back and sit down to listen. Want to prepare dinner and listen to music, you interrupt yourself constantly to attend the record. Play 45’s, me thinks not.
Yet more nails in the coffin of LPs when iTunes were introduced. Even more when later Spotify entered the scene in 2008. But then suddenly, CD sales started to decline since 2008…. Many forumites posted about SQ of various formats, about CD and Vinyl sales on here. FamilyDog posted recently that Vinyl sales exceeded CD sales in 2022. Many on here is passionate about Vinyl.
The bulk of users today streams more music than sales of CDs, remembering that a few hundred Billion CDs exist in the World, and countless Vinyl LPs and 45s. More and more online services sprung up, the lockdown shut down physical shops and online became a real revolution, even in SA. So now most people just rent the songs, they do no longer buy them.
Part 2
