I think I only ever bought a single album on Bandcamp – an artist that provides the 99% Invisible podcast with music, melodium. Still, I read their recent blog post with interest: Everything is Terrific: The Bandcamp 2016 Year in Review.
Everything is Terrific: The Bandcamp 2016 Year in Review
I knew people bought vinyl. But they also buy tapes? “Digital album sales grew 20%, tracks 23%, and merch 34%. Growth in physical sales was led by vinyl, which was up 48%, and further boosted by CDs (up 14%) and cassettes (up 58%).”
I also knew people used Spotify and similar services (but not me). I didn’t know they were so successful and that this endangers the record business: “According to Nielsen, it grew 3% in the U.S. in 2016, while sales of digital albums fell 20%, tracks were down 25%, and physical albums dropped 14%. These declines are not at all surprising given the industry-wide push toward subscription music rental offerings, and indeed as the year came to a close, those services reached a combined 100 million paying subscribers.”
#Music