Sales & Formats!

A subject near and dear to my heart.  I pay for music, always have.  I have owned 45s, 33 rpms, 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs and digital downloads...  lately I've spent most of my money on used CDs. I like owning a tangible thing, I enjoy the album art, the liner notes; I enjoy listening to a disc as one coherent piece.  I very rarely spend more than $10 for a disc, sometimes as little as $3 or $4.


You look at this chart and you marvel at the reign of the CD format.  CD sales peaked around 1999 (Backstreet Boys) looks like the bubble burst in 2000, right around the 9/11 thing.  And music sales are down just like everything else in these post-bubble years.  And when people say that there is a resurgence of vinyl, well, it's certainly a micro, micro, micro-market.

You wonder if the record companies blew it when they were selling CDs for $16, $17, and $18 dollars. But maybe the world just took a turn, and this is just another window into "The Great Reset." There is now a generation of people who have never paid for music.  CD sales have fallen dramatically.  There's a big debate about the ethics of illegal downloads vs. actually paying for music, but for lots of folks that horse left the barn long ago.