Digital music sales overtake CDs for the first time in UK

Seán

Digital music sales overtake CDs for the first time in UK.

For the first time, revenue from music download/subscription sales has overtaken physical media in the first three months of 2012. While individual song download sales have overtaken CD singles for many years, album sales including box sets continued to sell better than as downloads up until now.


Read the full article here: http://www.myce.com/news/digital-mus...e-in-uk-61840/


Please note that the reactions from the complete site will be synched below.

Jesterrace

This doesn't surprise me in the least. Makes sense given the number of albums, etc. that come out where only a handful of songs (or just the one) are worth listening to. The only way to legally obtain them without buying the whole disc is to purchase them digitally. That used to drive me nuts when I was buying CDs and I would be stuck buying a 15 track album with only 2-3 songs that I really wanted to hear. Buying them used help take some of the sting out of it, but having a medium where you can get everything you want without having to pay for the stuff that you don't simply can't be beat. That and with a number of sites (ie Amazon) you also have access to the import tracks at the same cost, instead of buying the import version CD at twice the price of the domestic disc, just for a couple of songs.

olddancer

And so ends the sale of High Fidelity audio equipment.
The Fat, lazy iTwitts of the world have become content with their iCrap and can't be bothered to lift their Cheetos bloated butts off of their chairs long enough to actually visit a Music Store.
CD quality is in itself crap, iCrap isn't even half that good.

Seán

That's especially true with many over the past 10 years that apply heavy dynamic range compression and many of the latest tracks seem to be getting even worse with this.

A very good example is the beat parts of the David Guetta single "Titanium", where it seems like the radio volume is being rapidly turned down/up between every beat , which in my opinion sounds horrible and I doubt the CD version sounds any better.

robertmorewood

+ 1

The rapid volume changes are due to over compression, a bit like when they broadcast Analog over sine wave for the radio.
I thought when the CD came out it would progress in quality, not stay at 44.1khz, not that great for music listening. And don't get me started with mp3/4. Its a real shame the way sound quality dropped when digital came about, sure there where some specialist gear out there that had higher sample rates but no good for the consumer who just wants to listen to their music. Just take a walk around the likes of currys and you can see the level of quality hifi on sale.