I think you're overestimating how popular CDs are, however, I haven't looked into any numbers to back this up. In the circles I operate in, there are very few, if any, people I know that have purchased a CD in the last 5 years and definitely none that consume most of their music from CDs. Streaming is definitely the primary means of consumption with people 25 and under (which is generally the demographic I interact with), and I'm pretty sure this is fairly consistent. CDs seem to be more popular with classical musicians, considering that people can still make some decent money selling CDs. I know that streaming isn't generally the best way to consume classical music due to compression and general loss of detail, but I'm not sure how much better CDs are. I actually think I know more people who consume music semi-regularly on vinyl rather than on CDs! I'm guessing the reason companies still manufacture CDs is that there's likely still enough of an audience, especially in certain demographics, but on my limited perspective as a student in southern Ontario, I see little love for CDs
Neither of my millenial daughters buys CDs. They do buy albums on some kind of streaming thing I don't understand.When I was cleaning house I asked them which CDs they wanted me to save, and they laughed at me. They said pitch them all, we can listen to anything we want anytime.
Streaming and other newer resources, however, have now been around for quite some time yet, for whatever reason, there seems so far to be scant evidence of their supplanting the CD medium...
In the 1980s, CDs began largely to take over from vinyl as the standard recorded medium of the day, yet that transition seemed to take only a few years at most.
streaming services pay terribly low
And yet vinyl have sold more than CDs recently. Vinyl album sales in the US exceeded those of CDs for the first time in 34 years in 2020.
This is indeed true; given the extent to which vinyl was superseded by CDs, to what might you attribute this recent upturn which pertains not only in US?
You can look up reasons for why this is by specific google searches into the topic, for example key words could be "vinyl popularity" there is no point regurgitating the info that is already out there. Nevertheless physical sales are simply eclipsed by digital and streaming.
That's common knowledge
yet record companies - which, like most of the rest of us, depend for their survival on making profits - continue to manufacture and release CDs; it is not obvious why they would do that if streaming and the rest were to have remnoved most of the market for them.
Although not quite the same subject, one can only hope that campaigns to increase streaming royalties are eventually successful, as such payments are pitiful at present; it is therefore a good thing for artists that CDs - which pay far higher rates - continue to be issued.
Yet you opened this thread with the statement:"Streaming and other newer resources ..... there seems so far to be scant evidence of their supplanting the CD medium"
Producing CDs is inexpensive and the technology to create them is readily available to even the consumer market level. If one can make profit why would you not do it? The industry has not died but it is certainly standing in the shadow of technological progress. No major music recording publisher I can think of relies on CD sales nowadays and they have all modernised to the new streaming/digital format. More artists are benefiting from streaming than they did from CD sales.
Precisely; I did not state that these had no impact upon the CD medium, merely that they seem not to have supplanted it.
Some might depend as far as they are able upon both and it is certainly rue that producing CDs is less expensive than once it was, but there is no doubt about the fact that artists derive far less from streaming rates than they do for those that apply to CDs; the extent to which artists are benefiting from streaming revenues can be assessed only in terms of the unit prices applicable to each from each such source.
You would be simply wrong to say it has not supplanted (supersede, take the place of authority and replace) the CD medium as the evidence is quite clear they have done just that!
There is ample evidence that more artists make more money from streaming than CD sales ever did for them.
Then how do you account for the fact that major CD manufacturers / suppliers continue to manufacture / supply CDs?
I presume the reason why companies still print them off by the hundreds or thousands is that there is *some* demand for them, and the industry standard for audio CD manufacture is replication, as opposed to duplication. Replication typically requires a minimum order of 500 units, though you might find some places willing to do as low as c. 250, and the process is relatively inexpensive.
Then how do you account for the fact that major CD manufacturers / suppliers continue to manufacture / [supply CDs?
There is ample evidence of the very opposite;
one has only to look at the stats for what the various outfits pay per stream to recognise that - and I have only to look at my own statements to see the vast difference in unit payments between streams and CDs.
More artists have made money through streaming than CDs. This is not to say that ALL have benefited from it but the industry today has more complicated economics and it is also evolving.
"More artists are benefiting from streaming than they did from CDs according to new data. Official figures released by record labels' association the BPI show that more artists are succeeding as streaming and the music industry boomed in 2021. In 2021, nearly 2000 artists were streamed over 10 million times in the UK. This compares with 1,798 in 2020 and 1,537 in 2019, up a quarter in two years. It also means nearly twice as many artists are now earning meaningful royalties as they could in the the CD era.
For an artist, 10 million streams generates at least the same royalties as 10,000 CD sales, and nearly 2,000 artists will achieve at least 10 million streams this year in the UK alone – nearly double the number who sold the equivalent number of CDs and downloads in 2007."
illegal piracy cost the industry a great deal of loss.
It is a complicated process balancing how much each stream should be paid and how that money trickles down to the artist themselves I don't think any one of us here can really have any authority on that topic unless we are experts in the economics of it all. All we have to realize is that the numbers are growing each year where the physical medium of records have dwindled to such a rate that making a living off those is many times more difficult for those wanting to make a living from streaming their work.
Of course there needs to be change to benefit the artists more but like I said none of us here are expert enough to actually layout exactly what that is.
True, but tht iis in part down to some artists not being asked or having opportunities to make CDs for record companies; streaming is clearly more versatile and flexible in that respect.
Same answer as in the previous paragraph.
Aye, there's the rub; c.1,000 times as many streams are required to generate the royalties that would be generated by a single CD.
This would appear to presume the need for vast quantities of streams compared to CDs
the fact that there are many more streaming possibilities than there are CD ones does nothing to make those figures look any better. "Nearly 2,000 artists in UK alone?"; if that's correct (and there's no obvious reason to doubt it), it is likely that many of them would be in the fields of rock, pop and other "non-classical" musics, so the number of performers and composers active in "classical" fields is likely to be a very small proportion of that "nearly 2,000".
And still it does! Indeed, the internet has made piracy so much easier and, as a consequence, so much more widespread. I do not, of course, blame the internet for that; responsibility lies with the users for whom piracy is a way of life.
Indeed, the issue is still in its comparative infancy despite the length of time during which streaming and the like have been possible but, even without detailed examination and analysis of the figures, it is clear that making a living from streaming is possible only for a very small proportion of artists in the "classical" field.
Streaming though is mostly done away from the computer, on mobile devices. You can research into many examples of this occuring, eg Spotify music streaming service is now more listened to on mobile devices than on a PC for instance. Heaphones or connecting to whatever other speakers you have thus becomes a lot easier. I have a pair of high quality Bang & Olufsen headphones which I can stream my music on the go to any time I want. Today you are not stuck listening to high quality production of music in your single living room set up with multiple expensive speakers. Most audiophiles prefer the sound of speakers, but many experts will argue that headphones more accurately convey the true sound of a recording. In any case you are not stuck behind a computer when dealing with streaming, if that was the case it hardly would be as popular as it is today.
One advantage of streaming is the convenience of being able to listen on the move, but then that's not always necessarily the listener's preference, especially if the material being listened to requires considerable concentration.
Headphones can indeed be very good but every audiophole to whom I've spoken prefers not only speakers but high quality pre-amps, power amps and the rest.
That said, as long as streaming services continue to offer the pitifully minuscule payment rates illustrated in the link to https://producerhive.com/music-marketing-tips/streaming-royalties-breakdown/ above, in which the worst cited offender, Deezer, requires around 1,100 streams to generate an income of one UK pound, many artists will struggle to make much more than a few hundred pounds annually at best; royalty payments are not the only issue here, of course but it remains a pressing problem and the more music that is created and recorded the worse it it likely to get.
none of us are experts in the field of streaming marketing to really have any authority on the topic the real understanding of the economics and business management of it all requires specialist understanding
... one doesn't need to be a specialist expert in any branch of economics to recognise the differences between royalty rates on streams and those generated by CDs.
I would have thought that availability of .pdf files would pretty much have supplanted demand for paper copies. The advantages of the former over the latter are obvious - much lower production cost, ease and speed of transmission, lack of requirement for peripherals, absence of shipping costs and the rest - and the disadvantage (insofar as it is one) is that recipients have to print the files if they need to do so. In a decade, however, this has not proved to be the case; it has been a good move to offer scores electronically but I never cease to be surprised at the numbers of people who still prefer to receive scores in bound paper format.
Sheet music stores have been vaporised off the face of this earth left right and centre there are only a microscopic amount left behind, the PDF (and other digital formats) has utterly decimated the market. Before the internet I would spend hundreds every year on classical music scores and often wait months for them to arrive from overseas, today there is simply no need to do so and thank goodness for that!
... I wold have expected the supply of scores in .pdf format to eclipse those for paper copies
for reasons such as those that you mention, but that my experience is otherwise; of course offering .pdf files has been a good idea and has enhanced our supply facility, yet some people still want paper copies.
We always try to ship paper material promptly so no one ever has to wait months, delays being down mainly to shipping times and Customs formalities, but the inevitable timescale and cost factors are such as would have led me to expect that hardly anyone would choose this method.
Only recently, for example, I had to send a package of scores whose packed weight was just under 12kg for which shippng costs alone came to around £225, on top of several hundred pounds for the material itself, all of which could have been done for a fraction of this via .pdf.
They do. There are far more people using PDFs and printing them off rather than buying books.
Yeah sure, there will always be someone willing to buy it. I am sure if one wrote music on stone tablets there would be someone buying that too
Topic: Recording media 