Digital albums Sales Up, Vinyl Makes A Comback In 2009

[DudeAsInCool]

Ars Technica reports:

"According to Nielsen's numbers for 2009, overall music sales were up a very modest 2.1 percent over 2008—this is a far cry from the 10.5 percent growth between 2007 and 2008, but growth nonetheless. When you split the numbers out, though, they are much more telling: music lovers bought nearly 1.16 billion digital tracks in 2009 (up 8.3 percent from 2008), and 76.4 million online digital albums (up 16.1 percent)."

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Graphs courtesy of Nielsen

[Redneck4sure]

I'm glad the record companies made even more money in last year's dismal economy than they ever have. Now I feel even better about pirates.

Ahoy Kiwi!!

The links on the sidebar of that article were interesting too. Specifically, the one about Verizon metering your internet. I knew that cable companies were doing it and AT&T started trials a year ago. I was wondering why I hadn't heard anything lately and why they hadn't cut my connection. Their "trial pricing" was something like $40 for 100g a month and then $1 per gig after that. For me that means my bill would go to over $200 for the same service I get now for $40.

Comcast had their metered price plan set up to be much more fair for light users. Instead of everybody paying $42 a month with a 250g cap, they charged $75 and capped you at 100g. Now isn't that fair? Low users pay twice as much and heavy users get disconnected. Lately I have been averaging over 10g per day so I'd be screwed on most plans.

That's the problem with metered service, especially if you have limited choices. Light users get ripped off, heavy users get robbed.

At a dollar per gig all those streaming services will be gone but I'll have more free time since I won't be surfing music blogs. But one thing is for sure, I'll have a few thousand gigs of downloaded music to enjoy.

Back to the topic of this thread which is vinyl, I have a couple of audiophile vinyl album rips playing right now.

Temptations - Cloud Nine (1969) Speakers Corner 180g reissue

Temptations - All Directions (1972) Speakers Corner 180g reissue

Gotta love that Motown! The sound quality doesn't get any better than these Speakers Corner 180g vinyl rips. They were ripped by a pro with first class equipment and they are far superior to cd. Each album is only 35 minutes long but each one is just over 700megs using the 24bit 96khz flac format. I was surprised to see these posted. I was also thrilled. I have even seen a few albums posted in 24bit 192khz. To give you an idea about the file sizes involved, cds are redbook format which is 16-44.1k. In a redbook flac, these Temptations albums would be just over 200megs. In 24-96k the size is just over 700megs. With a 24-192k the size would be over 1400megs. My sound system and hearing aren't good enough to justify downloading those high resolution recordings but I am impressed when I see them. Lots of time and money is spent on ripping and posting albums in that quality.

In their count of vinyl sales, I wonder what percentage is the audiophile reissues (MFSL, Speakers Corners and such) and what percentage is old fashioned, run-of-the-mill, 130g or less discs. I have no idea about the audiophile vinyl sales percentages but I can say that over half of the lossless vinyl rips I see are audiophile reissues.

[DudeAsInCool]

Temptations - Cloud Nine (1969) Speakers Corner 180g reissue

Me want.

[Redneck4sure]

Me want.

no.

[DudeAsInCool]

no.

[Redneck4sure]

If I shared it with you I'd have to shoot you.