The music industry in the US generates more sales from vinyl than from CDs

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The American music industry generated more sales from vinyl records than from CDs in the first half of 2020. This was mainly due to the sharp decline in CD sales, whose turnover almost halved in a year.

In the first half of 2020, vinyl records accounted for $ 232.1 million in sales, while CDs accounted for only $ 129.9 million. This is evident from the half-year figures of the Recording Industry Association of America. In the first half of 2019, CDs still generated nearly $ 250 million. This is the first time since the eighties that vinyl achieved more sales than CDs. The number of CDs sold is still higher than the number of vinyl records sold. In the first half of 2020, 10.2 million CDs were sold, compared to 8.8 million vinyl records.

It is not clear why the sales figures for CDs have halved within a year. RIAA does write that the corona crisis had a significant impact on the music industry, because stores were closed, for example. Total sales from physical products for the first half of 2020 were 23 percent lower than for the first half of 2019. Physical products accounted for $ 376 million in the first six months of 2020, which is 4 percent of the total sales of the company. sales of music.

Figures are per first half year and from RIAA

Streaming achieved sales of $ 4.8 billion in the first half year, which is an increase of 12 percent from a year earlier. Paid subscriptions are worth $ 3.4 billion, 14 percent more than a year earlier. So-called ‘Limited Tier’ subscriptions, which allow users to use less music offerings, for example, or on fewer devices, generated a half-year turnover of 441.7 million dollars. This subscription type rose the most in terms of turnover in the past year, up 18 percent on the year before.

Free streaming was relatively stable with sales of $ 421.4 million, SoundExchange streaming was up 8 percent to $ 467.7 million. This concerns music distributed via services such as Pandora, SiriusXM and online radio stations. The decrease in the turnover from downloaded music continues, in one year this turnover decreased by 22 percent. Downloaded music accounted for $ 351.3 million in the first half year, 6 percent of total music sales.

Figures are per first six months and come from RIAA

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