30 Years Of Music Industry Change

[billyworld99]

Each pie shows the revenue contribution from various formats, 1980-2010, based on RIAA revenue figures. If you want to see it again, just wait a few seconds for the animation to start over.

The following shipment figures are from the RIAA, dating back to 1973. The first shows album unit sales across four formats: 8-tracks, vinyl, CDs, and digital albums. The second shows singles across four formats: CD-singles, cassette singles (or 'cassingles'), vinyl singles, and digital singles. US specific.



I. Albums.

II. Singles.

 

[Lucilla]

Great info
Some people even say that cassettes sound better than digital formats
Maybe in the future digital formats will sound equally as good as CD's and Vinyls.
Until that happens I'll buy physical formats from acts I really like.

 

[Krshna28]

That's pretty cool, but what about the total unit sales (albums + singles).........

That'll tell us if the music industry is in a good place right now......

 

[MusicMan26]

I miss CD singles.

 

[TheChosenOne]

That was way cool!

 

[Krshna28]

Looking at the sales of single downloads............It must eventually peak and then it might drop, like what happened to the other formats.........

 

[Severus Snape]

^Of course they'll find something else, eventually. CDs pretty much monopolized music format until the mid-2000s according to the pie chart posted above. Perhaps in ten years, we'll download things to a little chip inside our brains, thus eliminating the need for a computer altogether!