Quote:
Originally Posted by -E-
There is also plenty of data out there on the buying habits of consumers: physical media is on the way out and has been for some time. Yes some will always cling to the past but even the ultra high end manufacturers must adapt to survive within a new generation of purchasers (many of whom still need training and coaching on the important virtues of quality over crap).
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E.......Yes, you are quite right. There is plenty of available data about consumer's buying habits. The shop worn mantra of physical media being on the way out is an exaggeration. Those with special interests beat that same drum a quarter century ago about the death of vinyl. Neilson/Billboard, the predominate source for tracking music sales (compact disc, vinyl, digital downloads), reports an active market in both CD's, digital downloads, and vinyl. CD's currently outsell vinyl ten to one while continuing to outpace digital downloads, albeit by a shrinking margin. According to the Neilson/Billboard sales figures for the first half of 2015, vinyl album sales reach 5.6 million. Compact disc sales during the same time reached 56.6 million, and digital downloads accounted for 53.7 million sales. Digital downloads were down by just over 1% during the first half of 2015 from the previous year.
Although certainly not as robust a sales picture as the music industry enjoyed in the 1970's and 1980's, physical media sales remain vibrant. Another important aspect to physical media is the depth of the catalog of available music. It will be decades if ever before digital downloads can lay claim to the same depth of available music in their catalog.
High-end audio equipment manufacturers continue to design, build, and bring to market premium CD/SACD/DAC players while other manufacturers continue delivering astonishing turntables, tonearms, and phono cartridges. There doesn't seem to be any end in site for the available components necessary to play physical media. That bodes well for the millions of people who own and enjoy large libraries of CD's, SACD's, and vinyl LP's. Physical media is not being tossed out with the proverbial bath water.
Certainly music servers, streaming audio, and computers have etched out a place in high-end audio. Convenience seems to be the driving force behind this approach to enjoying music libraries. But even with the advent of digital playback from hard drives and solid state drives many users experience a learning curve that isn't readily understood or mastered by all. In addition there is still the need for a transport to get one's physical media onto a server's drives. Say what you will, call it a useless spinner, but to enjoy all of our physical media from a music server we still must use a transport to move the majority of our music to a server. Somehow that doesn't strike me as the definition of useless. Music servers will continue to require a transport for this purpose until such time as the digital catalog catches up with the physical media catalog. In my opinion, that won't be happening any time soon. Despise the transport if you wish, but without it a server's library would remain limited to only what is available for download. Call it clinging to the past if you want. I see that as just more exaggeration. My point of view is different in that I enjoy accessing all formats, being able to use all the various playback mediums available in today's world. And why not?
The death knell chant for the eminent demise of music's physical media has been repeated over and over for years, yet by all accounts people are still buying, enjoying, and growing their physical media libraries. The market remains quite strong and I don't see it going away any time soon. Chant on if you deem it necessary to support your cause. It may be quite possible that one distant day in the future music servers might eventually be our only audio playback option, but that occasion is certainly not likely to happen any time soon.
