begin rant I think alot of the reason sales are down is that generally speaking music these days is crap anyway. There are not that many true (long lasting) entertainers anymore, more-so a marketing machine with recordings taylor made to a specific audience that has a finite number of customers. Why do you think all of the older big name groups of 60s,70s,80s (even 90s) etc are coming out doing reunion tours (& making big bucks too!) Music today is splintered into so many genres & sub genres that I doubt we will see anymore “pop” songs that the public at large would go out and buy anyway. A majority of artists are one-hit wonders. The cost of singles are simply too high, so most would wait to get the album, or just download the song or record off the radio. The singles market used to be huge, they stopped releasing EPs because people bought them instead of individual singles (ie more value for money) I bought my first CD in 1988 for about $24.99, they were expensive then because they cost a bit then to produce, and the market was small. CDs were invented late 60s/early 70s (http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm) but only a commercial player was relased in 1983. (Sony CDP-101 - I got one still works) 20 years later and the price has hardly changed and are even more incredibly cheap to produce now, I’ve seen some cd players which are cheaper to buy than some albums. The main reason companies went from vinyl to CD was that is was cheaper to make a CD than a record, not because it was “superior” format (but that’s another argument). I have 50+ year old vinyl that plays more reliably than some 20yo CDs I have. (Vinyl copying to vinyl is quite rare, than CD is to CD, so record companies had it good there, only had inferior copies made to tape and back as there were no mp3s, and CD burning was in it’s infancy. The biggest problem I find with record companies is that they don’t re-release alot of their back catalogue, so people resort to file sharing. Most people I know don’t share mp3s of new albums, but older albums which they can’t buy anymore, as it was only released on vinyl. Even some CD albums you can’t buy anymore, you only need to look around on the net at the prices some people are paying for older original albums. end rant
But good enough for someone like me. I also purchased the LPs and CDs I truly liked. Nowadays I basically purchase 0 music simply because almost everything is uninteresting. The rest of the time, radio listening is good enough.