Vinyl Is Hot Again. Sorta.

“People bought 43 million vinyl records last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). That’s 6 million more than the number of CDs sold in 2023, marking the second time since 1987 that’s happened and reflecting the steady 17-year-running growth of vinyl sales.”
….
“If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.”
….
“That doesn’t come close to touching streaming, of course — paid subscriptions, digital radio services like SiriusXM or TuneIn, and ad-supported services accounted for 84 percent of music revenue for the year, or about $14.4 billion. The RIAA says that’s a record.”

— “Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running,”  Wes Davis, The Verge

Related:

“Wax and Wane: The Tough Realities Behind Vinyl’s Comeback,” Joel Oliphint, Pitchfork

“The music industry’s newfangled growth business: vinyl records,” John McDuling, Quartz

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A Gender-Neutral Voice

Siri, Cortana, Alexa. Female voice assistants do our digital bidding. Sexist, no? Meet Q, the genderless voice of AI.

More:

“The world’s first genderless voice assistant is challenging gender stereotypes,”Cara Curtis, TheNextWeb

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New! The Sony Walkman.

Sony just introduced an exciting new portable audio product at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show: The Sony Walkman. No, not the tape cassette player that started the personal portable music era back 35 years ago. This is the $1200 Walkman NW-ZX2 High Resolution Audio Handset with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, 128GB of storage, a microSD slot, a touchscreen display, and Web connectivity.

Vinyl Is Back. Sort Of.

“More and more people are buying vinyl; sales hit a record 6.1 million units in the U.S. last year. But as demand increases, the number of American pressing plants remains relatively fixed. No one is building new presses because, by all accounts, it would be prohibitively expensive. So the industry is limited to the dozen or so plants currently operating in the States.”

— “Wax and Wane: The Tough Realities Behind Vinyl’s Comeback,” Joel Oliphint, Pitchfork

 More:

“The music industry’s newfangled growth business: vinyl records,” John McDuling, Quartz

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Earphones

“In the 1890s, a British company called Electrophone created a system allowing their customers to connect into live feeds of performances at theaters and opera houses across London. Subscribers to the service could listen to the performance through a pair of massive earphones that connected below the chin, held by a long rod. The form and craftsmanship of these early headphones make them a sort of remote, audio equivalent of opera glasses. It was revolutionary, and even offered a sort of primitive stereo sound. However, the earliest headphones had nothing to do with music, but were used for radio communication and telephone operators in the late 19th century.”

–“A Partial History of Headphones,” Jimmy Stamp, Smithsonian blog [link added]

Budapest’s long-running Telefon Hírmondó (“Telephone Herald”) phone newspaper preceded Electrophone. It often featured live opera performances, and seems to have used stock telephone ear speakers.

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Daddy, What’s a CD?

Astounding animated GIF about Compact Disc audio recording sales from Digital Music News.  Cliff Kuang explains it well at Fast Company Design.

Cassettes Are Back

Psst … Actually, Dolby® noise reduction removes some of that “psst.” Good to know since audio cassettes are back. More precisely, the concept of cassettes is back:

 “Cassette tapes make a comeback,” Caitlin Curran, Washington Post.

“Best of DC 2011, Best Medium: Cassette,” Jonathan L. Fischer, Washington City Paper

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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