recorded music sales by format 1980-2010

[MylesBAstor]

Hi

One of those sleepless nights ... I haven't read he whole exchange but it seems to me there is a strong unwillingness from us, audiophiles to accept the fact that in many cases mp3 can be indistinguishable from lossless. Without the knowledge that they are listening to an mp3 most audiophiles would be satisfied with mp3...
I will edge toward Jack's side and prefer to own the uncompressed version if at all possible.. While I don't lament the ultimate demise of Vinyl, not being convinced it to be the superior format ( Hi Myles ) I would feel very strongly about that of uncompressed music formats,especially that of hi-Rez.. Simply because the technology for uncompressed (CD quality ) and Hi-Rez is there and virtually cost the same as compressed ... My over 2000 CDs library occupy about 650 GB in FLAC, .ape and even some wav .. I will continue to buy music but I know that 2000 CDs are more CDs than I will ever listen in a lifetime ... Storage and processing costs will continue to drop despite the recent fluke, the recent rise of HDD price has been, so I am with Jack with

As far as vinyl's demise, I can't remember a period in the last 20 yrs where there's been so many turntable manufacturers and vinyl being issued. The only way it goes away is if the chemicals needed to make LPs goes away

 

[MylesBAstor]

In an earlier post, you said

"If nobody demands it, none of us are going to get it. So he can shoot his mouth of all he wants. If the record companies hear our voices, he's going to be a beneficiary. To me all he is saying is that we should just accept it lest we be painted as curmudgeons. It's like a kid in school telling the other kids they ain't hip if they don't smoke pot. Yeah, maybe so but since when was being hip better than being smart? Why settle when you don't have to?"

When you buy MP3 (or equivalent AAC downloads), you are adding to the success of those products. Given enough success with lossy format downloads, music companies will not feel motivated to take risks on lossless format downloads. If audiophiles and others establish a sizable market for CD quality or better downloads, the companies are more likely to jump in. Those sorts of messages are far more powerful that what a tiny set of audiophiles say in their forums.

I think that Gag is quite right about audiophiles. He said

"The rank-and-file audiophiles switch off the moment someone dares to suggest lossy compressed versions of good recordings can be better than uncompressed versions of bad ones. "

Railing about the completely unacceptability of lossy formats on audio forums is a common pastime for many audiophiles. I don't see much subtlety in their arguments.

Bill

One problem with your argument. You ain't picking the best format, you're picking the lesser of two evils.

 

[FrantzM]

As far as vinyl's demise, I can't remember a period in the last 20 yrs where there's been so many turntable manufacturers and vinyl being issued. The only way it goes away is if the chemicals needed to make LPs goes away

Myles

Our generation has at most 50 more years before it goes the way of the Dodo .. We are the last to remember what an LP is (OK throughout the world there might be 15 teeagers to care about LP and that on an USB turntable ) A friend of mine 35 years old, never had seen a "C: prompt" on a PC , even less a monochrome monitor ... LP will continue to exist as a niche for a while and disappear ... It is thought by some to be superior, not proven. It is not conevenient and frankly the numbers pale in comparison .. if you do find solace in that 10,000 LP (or whatever number) albums were cut the last year, fine .. meanwhile I would bet that even a niche players like HD Tracks, alone may have sold at least 30,000 digital albums last year... I do understand your position mind you ... I wouldn't want to see R2R go away... by the way .. It is IMO a better technology and medium than LP I think we might agree on that but it is virtually dead in practice and IMHO there are better replacements... ( Yea ! I know. The Horror!!! ) back to the thread ...

 

[microstrip]

Hi

One of those sleepless nights ... I haven't read he whole exchange but it seems to me there is a strong unwillingness from us, audiophiles to accept the fact that in many cases mp3 can be indistinguishable from lossless. Without the knowledge that they are listening to an mp3 most audiophiles would be satisfied with mp3... (...)

FrantzM,
Can you point us explicitly these many cases when MP3 is indistinguishable from CD or lossless? I am curious to know if they are relevant for my listening taste.
Or can we assume you are just referring to cases in which the original recording is so poor that anything will do?

 

[MylesBAstor]

Myles

Our generation has at most 50 more years before it goes the way of the Dodo .. We are the last to remember what an LP is (OK throughout the world there might be 15 teeagers to care about LP and that on an USB turntable ) A friend of mine 35 years old, never had seen a "C: prompt" on a PC , even less a monochrome monitor ... LP will continue to exist as a niche for a while and disappear ... It is thought by some to be superior, not proven. It is not conevenient and frankly the numbers pale in comparison .. if you do find solace in that 10,000 LP (or whatever number) albums were cut the last year, fine .. meanwhile I would bet that even a niche players like HD Tracks, alone may have sold at least 30,000 digital albums last year... I do understand your position mind you ... I wouldn't want to see R2R go away... by the way .. It is IMO a better technology and medium than LP I think we might agree on that but it is virtually dead in practice and IMHO there are better replacements... ( Yea ! I know. The Horror!!! ) back to the thread ...

Frantz: If that's the case, why do record companies still issue rock recordings on LP (hey jazz and classical are other stories, but that's a whole 'nother thread as to why that's come about)? If the kids weren't buying the records and the companies making money, then you bet it would die faster than the dodo.

 

[FrantzM]

FrantzM,
Can you point us explicitly these many cases when MP3 is indistinguishable from CD or lossless? I am curious to know if they are relevant for my listening taste.
Or can we assume you are just referring to cases in which the original recording is so poor that anything will do?

Micro

let me add this .. YMMV.. You Mileage May Vary. Uner blind (I know most of us Audiophiles hate those conditions) it can be very, very difficult to distinguish 320 Kb/s mp3 from CD.. I am in a Christmas mood so I am using all those qualifiers.. Not really wanting to start a food fight.
In all seriousness, I will ask you in turn a question. have you tried to listen to an mp3 at 320? Can you tell us what were your impressions?
Mine were that it was very, difficult for me to determine when knowledge was removed.. On cuts and pieces I know extremely well and on my own system, I can and with a good degree of certainty using Foobar ABX. about 60~70% for cuts. On unknown music and or different system ... let me say that I was thoroughly humbled ... Your hearing acuity may be superior to mine so again YMMV.

Now if you are asking for specific references to the subject Google is your friend

If you want to conduct your very own tests.. Download FOObar .. Free then download the component called ABX comparator .. also free ... Your results on this would be appreciated ...

back to the thread .. I maintain that LP is beyond moribund ... After our generation Pffffft ... Just like Edison Cylinder ... Even for many here who truly believe Analog to be superior I am willing to bet that the vast majority of their listening is to digital.. Poll Thread upcoming ...

 

[JackD201]

On unknown music and or different system ... let me say that I was thoroughly humbled

Same here. Like I said previously the differences are in nuances. Lossy is subtractive. It's always hard to tell if you don't know what was missing in the first place. Many systems like my car's don't do nuances well anyway so I definitely don't require CD quality and the memory they require. I may not be able to listen to all of my collection going forward, but looking backwards and browsing the play count, I've listened to all of them at least once, most at least twice.

Not to mention that genre's like Alternative, Metal, Pop, modern R&B and Dance, for me, don't depend on such nuances to be enjoyable. A good hook and bass line is often all that's needed. Come to think of it, these genre's make up some 90% of my downloads. The Standards, Classic and Progressive Rock, Folk, Jazz and Classical I chase on LP, SACD and CD in that order.

This brings up an interesting consideration. Are music lovers today indifferent because of what they listen to?

 

[Old Listener]

One problem with your argument. You ain't picking the best format, you're picking the lesser of two evils.

I don't see how your reply relates to the material from my post that you quoted.

Bill

 

[Old Listener]

You have something agains audiophile forums Bill? With as many posts as you have, it looks like you are enjoying at least this one right?

I do not understand the relevance of these remarks.

In an earlier post, I remarked on the irony that you were unhappy that an audiophile suggested that an MP3 file was an acceptable last resort after having both lossy files from the iTunes store. You failed to acknowledge the irony so I remarked on the irony in the post you quoted.

The issue is not whether lossy format downloads should die but whether full quality downloads will be available for all the same material.

Bill

 

[MylesBAstor]

I don't see how your reply relates to the material from my post that you quoted.

Bill

Compressed or uncompressed MP3? Who really cares? They both suck. Kinda like choosing between who's the worse dictator: Pol Pot or Stalin. The both killed millions of people

 

[Old Listener]

Compressed or uncompressed MP3? Who really cares? They both suck. Kinda like choosing between who's the worse dictator: Pol Pot or Stalin. The both killed millions of people

What in the world do you mean by compressed or uncompressed MP3? Are you referring to compression of dynamics? Compression of dynamics by record companies is quite independent of the delivery format: MP3, lossless download, CD or LP.

Compression of dynamics was not mentioned in quote from my post you replied to. I still do not have a clue about the relation of your remarks to anything in my post that you quoted.

Bill

 

[MylesBAstor]

What in the world do you mean by compressed or uncompressed MP3? Are you referring to compression of dynamics? Compression of dynamics by record companies is quite independent of the delivery format: MP3, lossless download, CD or LP.

Compression of dynamics was not mentioned in quote from my post you replied to. I still do not have a clue about the relation of your remarks to anything in my post that you quoted.

Bill

Sorry was setting up a new computer and brain was elsewhere. Meant lossless.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I've always said I'll take good music anywhere I can get it but come on, how can one be happy about a future where only MP3s or AAC are available en masse and the rest is a smattering of 16/44 and Hi-Rez files of "tried and true, audiophile approved material"?

I don't think that's the future, Jack. iTunes switched from 128 kbps to 256, not because they have an audiophile audience who cares, but because they could. The bandwidth of most internet connections and the size of most hard drives made it a no-brainer. Will they stop at 320 where the overwhelming majority of people - even those who swear they can - cannot reliably distinguish from lossless? it could happen. Or bandwidth could get so fast, storage could get so cheap that it won't make any economic sense to even bother to compress the master for distribution in the first place.

In the meantime. I agree with pretty much everything in Old Listener's post. Especially the idea that the music/performance comes first. The recording of Bruno Walter's conducting Beethoven's 4th symphony is not great, but I'd own it, and listen to it, even if I could only get it at 128kbps. And I'd listen to Birth of the Cool, at 128, through the speaker of an iPod, before I'd give half a second to the navel-gazing atmospheric new age pablum (or just mediocre jazz) that is many audiophile recordings.

Let's not lose sight of the objective.

Tim

 

[microstrip]

Micro

let me add this .. YMMV.. You Mileage May Vary. Uner blind (I know most of us Audiophiles hate those conditions) it can be very, very difficult to distinguish 320 Kb/s mp3 from CD.. I am in a Christmas mood so I am using all those qualifiers.. Not really wanting to start a food fight.
In all seriousness, I will ask you in turn a question. have you tried to listen to an mp3 at 320? Can you tell us what were your impressions?
Mine were that it was very, difficult for me to determine when knowledge was removed.. On cuts and pieces I know extremely well and on my own system, I can and with a good degree of certainty using Foobar ABX. about 60~70% for cuts. On unknown music and or different system ... let me say that I was thoroughly humbled ... Your hearing acuity may be superior to mine so again YMMV.

Now if you are asking for specific references to the subject Google is your friend

If you want to conduct your very own tests.. Download FOObar .. Free then download the component called ABX comparator .. also free ... Your results on this would be appreciated ...

back to the thread .. I maintain that LP is beyond moribund ... After our generation Pffffft ... Just like Edison Cylinder ... Even for many here who truly believe Analog to be superior I am willing to bet that the vast majority of their listening is to digital.. Poll Thread upcoming ...

I also do not want to start any fight - for me hifi is an hobby and hobbies are not worth a fight, independently of season . .

But I have found that most of the time I am prepared and able to supply any details about my experiences and many times my open questions are answered with another question.

I must say I am ignorant about MP3 and do not to know what is exactly MP3 at 320. I assumed that you were addressing the usual and popular MP3, as you only made a general comment. If you were addressing something special, I am out. I listened to a few MP3 downloads with a borrowed ARC DAC8 a few months ago and they sounded much inferior to my CDs - it is my only experience. My son Ipod connected to my system sounds poor. It is why I asked you for a few suggestions of good MP3 tittles, that according to your experience could sound almost as good as CD.

 

[fas42]

At one point I had a bit of a play with the LAME MP3 encoder, which, in spite of the name :b, is probably the best one out there, the Lotus (car analogy) of encoders. 320 is nominally the best you can go, but there are special "extra" formats which some readers can handle, which allow you to go to higher rates for better quality again. But LAME allows you to get very close to the metal, with fine tuning of a whole lot of parameters to get the absolute best quality for a particular file at the 320 rate. And I have to say the results were pretty impressive, still audible differences, but using Audacity to create a difference between the original and processed showed that very little at a significantly high sound level was lost ...

Frank

 

[Old Listener]

a practical example of format choice

I found this album on Arkivmusic today on sale for $ 12.99 (plus shipping) as an ArkivCD. (a made on demand CD-R.)

Blackbirds Of 1928 & Shuffle Along (1920s musicals with black casts.)
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=666704


I always look on Amazon for cheap used CDs before buying a $ 10+ new CD. However, the album is only available as MP3 files for $ 6.99 total. No new or used CDs on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Blackbirds-Sh...=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1323467587&sr=1-2

The music was recorded in 1953 so the recording is mono and sound quality is so-so. There are only 8 tracks so it is very short measure as a CD. The Amazon samples sound OK. So do I save money and get the MP3 album or spring for the ArkivCD to get a theoretical improvement in sound quality?

More importantly, I think more music on CDs will go out of the catalog in this way. If I am lucky, the music will remain available as an MP3 album. If I am luckier, it will be available as an ArkivCD. Best of all would be for used CDs to remain available and cheap for any music I want to acquire.

Bill

 

[mep]

The thing I like about my local record store is that they have more new LPs to buy than they have CDs. I just bought 3 more new jazz LPs tonight and will be listening to them shortly. And Myles is right, I don't know if there was ever a time there were so many different turntables for sale at all price ranges as well as cartridges. This may well be the "golden ages" as far as buying tables, arms, and cartridges. Only a rich man could go to any of the online stores that sells new LPs and afford to buy everything that is available.

 

[FrantzM]

HI

THe point of the matter is that for each TT that is sold I would bet a million of mp3 downloads were performed and at least 100 CD players were sold ... IN our very small world we take LP sales for a huge deal but these would not even register in percentage of mp3 player sold unless we want to deal with tens of zeroes ... If one is into LP .. DO enjoy them while you can because after as our generations ages the format demand will decrease further .. I wil start a poll in an instant

 

[Old Listener]

Only a rich man could go to any of the online stores that sells new LPs and afford to buy everything that is available.

So from your point of view, there are plenty of LPs to buy.

From my point of view, very little music I want to buy is available on LPs.

Bill

 

[mep]

So from your point of view, there are plenty of LPs to buy.

From my point of view, very little music I want to buy is available on LPs.

Bill

And I respect that Bill.