Streaming Music Beats CD Sales In US For The First Time

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Digital downloads and streaming music are seriously kicking CD sales where it hurts.

According to data on music sales from the Recording Industry Association of America, sales in the US from streaming music were $1.87 billion in 2014, the RIAA said, while CD sales were $1.85 billion. Streaming revenue -- which includes subscription services like Spotify and Apple's Beats Music, radio like Pandora and Sirius XM, and ad-supported operations like Vevo, YouTube and free versions of Spotify -- jumped 29 percent last year, while CD revenue dropped 12.7 percent.
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No news here.

Convenience always beats every other aspect of a product for the average user, be it quality, price, etc.

We see it everywhere. Take the explosion of coffee pods, costing more than making drip coffee and at lower quality than drip coffee, yet they are astonishingly popular.

The message to marketers is that for consumer goods, it doesn't matter how good they are or how much they cost, as long as they are convenient they will sell like proverbial hotcakes.
 
I still buy nearly 100% of my content on CD/DVD/BR discs.

I like being able to rip the disc and enjoy the content when and how I want to.

Amazon Prime is nice for movies, but useless on my phone when I've got a shitty connection. Rips I copy to my phone however play fine no matter what and use less battery power than streaming them down and also dont run up my data use for the month. ;)

I also make heavy use of Amazon's AutoRIP for CD's for the same reason. They store a digital copy there, but I get the physical disc to do as I please with as well. Win/Win in my book. :D
 
I still buy most of my music on CDs. I prefer having them for in the car rather than having to hook my phone or mp3 player up with a cord. the sound quality is better for me too. I might feel differently if I had a different car but for now I will continue using my CDs.
 
Apparently physical CD revenue still beat streaming in 2014.

From the article:
screen-shot-2015-03-19-at-8-51-55-am.png
 
When are these retards going to start selling lossless files.
 
yomike007 said:
People still buy CDs?
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Yes. Some of us prefer to own rather than rent music...we also prefer lossless audio over MP3. Besides, in most cases, I can buy a CD for about the same price as an MP3 album and I get the MP3s too, if I buy it on Amazon.

To me, Spotify is fine for checking an album out before buying it, but I wouldn't pay 10 bucks a month for the service. I've got a music server for streaming as well as commercial free streaming radio.
 
nilepez said:
Yes. Some of us prefer to own rather than rent music...we also prefer lossless audio over MP3. Besides, in most cases, I can buy a CD for about the same price as an MP3 album and I get the MP3s too, if I buy it on Amazon.

To me, Spotify is fine for checking an album out before buying it, but I wouldn't pay 10 bucks a month for the service. I've got a music server for streaming as well as commercial free streaming radio.
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I am the opposite, i wont pay $10-$20 for a CD so i can get 2-3 good tracks and the rest filler crap.
 
Boy, that's one industry that isn't hurting! At least they've stopped yelling about piracy a little less in recent years.
 
And I still buy the occasional CD. I buy off Amazon. Prime is great, and autorip is nice. I still use streaming, but would never pay for a digital-only copy.
 
raz-0 said:
You mean like best buy, wal-mart, target? All gone?
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THose aren't music stores and the amount of music they stock gets smaller every year. Never mind that Walmart was selling edited versions of albums 20 years ago, without telling customers. Still remember a co-worker complaining about getting a metallica album that didn't seem right. Iasked him where he bought it...it was Walmart, of course.
 
I listen to way more music since switching to Spotify. Now I have damn near all the music all the time anywhere I am. I've found dozens of new bands I would have never listened to without Spotify.
 
nilepez said:
THose aren't music stores and the amount of music they stock gets smaller every year. Never mind that Walmart was selling edited versions of albums 20 years ago, without telling customers. Still remember a co-worker complaining about getting a metallica album that didn't seem right. Iasked him where he bought it...it was Walmart, of course.
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But they ship a buttload of albums. When talking about financial viability of selling music, they matter. Even if you don't like them.
 
raz-0 said:
But they ship a buttload of albums. When talking about financial viability of selling music, they matter. Even if you don't like them.
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They do, but every year sales take a big hit. My guess is that iTunes alone will sell more than Target, BBY and Walmart combined.

Reality is if you buy music at Walmart, you're buying a huge hit (new or catalog). 10 years ago, I bought lots of music at BBY, today, I can rarely find anything there (which is mostly because they have less than half as much music to choose from). As a result, Amazon gets almost all of my business.
 
Gabriel said:
I still listen to CDs in the car.
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I have an in dash 6 CD changer in my car I bought in the spring of 2013. I don't even know if it works. Haven't tried it once :p

As I have gotten older, and new music appeals to me less and less, I find that I spend more time listening to the news in the car than I do any music.

I honestly have not bought a CD in over 15 years. No new music after the late 90s has appealed to me enough to go out to the store and buy a CD.

I too use Spotify. It is very convenient. The quality isn't the best, but I'll keep my quality listening for at home with my dedicated headphone amp and custom ripped CD's.
 
As for people who say they don't want to hook their phone up to a cord, buy a bluetooth dongle for your car. Bluetooth streaming is awesome and doesn't cost more than $25 if you find the right one!!

As for cd selection at these stores, why would I want to buy Bieber, Gaga, Nickleback shovelware music by the industry. It's all crap. They haven't had any new exciting music in a long time, and most of the good music these days is coming from less known bands that are unlikely to have cd's anyways. I'm a big fan of downloading music weather it's Itunes, googleplay or mp3 sites. If you're into electronic music beatport would be a place to start and soundcloud for mixes.....
 
MrGuvernment said:
I am the opposite, i wont pay $10-$20 for a CD so i can get 2-3 good tracks and the rest filler crap.
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Then you're listening to the wrong types of music :p. The last time I purchased an album in which I didn't enjoy listening to the whole thing was back in the cassette-era when I was young and didn't know any better. Then again I was also a slave to the whole single-oriented radio marketing business at that time, as well.

Cmdrmonkey said:
lol at anyone who pays for content. It's like people haven't heard of torrent sites.
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You're not advocating for piracy, are you?

Megalith said:
When are these retards going to start selling lossless files.
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HD Tracks has a pretty good library available for lossless tracks. And they don't cost any more than the more popular lossy formats.
 
Forgot to add:
I buy all my CDs from FYE. I can usually find whatever I'm looking for or not looking for through their online store (rare prints, international releases, etc.). There is also a B&M location near me that has a good stock available on-hand.
 
Armenius said:
HD Tracks has a pretty good library available for lossless tracks. And they don't cost any more than the more popular lossy formats.
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Honestly, it doesn't even have to be lossles.

Lossy compression IF DONE RIGHT can produce audio quality indistinguishable from lossless to even a trained human ear using high end equipment.

The problem is that most lossy compression isn't done right.

A lot of the argument for lossless encoding is based on a combination of having heard too many poorly encoded lossy files, and placebo effects...
 
I have no use for CDs.

But my preferred digital format is FLAC, not AAC, MP3, or some other trash lossy codec. Right now the easiest legal way to get FLAC is to buy the CD and rip it myself, even if I never touch the CD ever again after that.

I feel like CDs right now are about where Casette tapes were around ~1992.
 
GotNoRice said:
I have no use for CDs.

But my preferred digital format is FLAC, not AAC, MP3, or some other trash lossy codec. Right now the easiest legal way to get FLAC is to buy the CD and rip it myself, even if I never touch the CD ever again after that.

I feel like CDs right now are about where Casette tapes were around ~1992.
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I challenge you to the hydrogenaudio blinded AB challenge to see if you really need FLAC :p
 
Zarathustra[H];1041504062 said:
I challenge you to the hydrogenaudio blinded AB challenge to see if you really need FLAC :p
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Even if you can't tell the difference it is nice to have for transcoding purposes.
 
The last album that I purchased where I thoroughly enjoyed every song was Evanescence Fallen. I got tired of paying $15 or so for a CD and hearing two good songs and 8 crap songs.

I been streaming in the car with Google Play Music for quite some time now and couldn't be happier.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041504062 said:
I challenge you to the hydrogenaudio blinded AB challenge to see if you really need FLAC :p
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I challenge you to come up with a reason to use lossy files other than the tiny bit of space that it saves (which might have been relevant 20 years ago).

I'm not against lossy compression, but it's not something that I use unless I have a reason to use it. Lossy compression may or may not make a file sound "worse", but it will never make it sound better... Thus, you can never go wrong choosing lossless.
 
High rez flacs and DSD is the name of the game now.

Redbook is the entry point, as far as I'm concerned.
 
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