Listening to music is still amazing today, it’s just that you’d be crazy to buy a CD. That’s not me saying that: That’s what the whole world is saying. CD sales have been declining every year for more than a decade because CDs are effectively useless in a world where digital music files are so easy to play and transfer, legally or otherwise.
That doesn’t mean there’s no worthwhile way to buy a real-world physical album. Even as the recording industry flails, vinyl is seeing a comeback. Maybe you’ve noticed this resurgence in the living rooms of pretentious friends who keep a crate full of ragged record jackets next to an old Technics turntable. At the very least, you’ve probably stumbled upon a small selection of shrink-wrapped records in trendy big city boutiques, and if not, maybe while Googling the meanings of Taylor Swift lyrics, you stumbled upon an Amazon listing for her latest record,Red, cut on 140 gram vinyl.
The renaissance of the long play record isn’t just an anecdotal trend. Even as physical record sales decline, people are buying more vinyl than they have in decades. In 2013, sales increased 31-percent to about 6 million units year-over-year. It’s not a single-year bump either, either. Sales have climbed to 6 million from after having been at about a million in 2007.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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Listening to music is still amazing today, it’s just that you’d be crazy to buy a CD. That’s not me saying that: That’s what the whole world is saying. CD sales have been declining every year for more than a decade because CDs are effectively useless in a world where digital music files are so easy to play and transfer, legally or otherwise.
