Amid the almost daily reports of some venerable music institution falling on harder times, an honest startup with a good idea packing it in, and even a recent Next Big Thing choking on its own overcooked and anemic espresso hubris, there are signs of hope if you choose to look for them.
People are still consuming vast amounts of music and some are even choosing to pay for it with legal tender. Digital music revenue in the US jumped 43% from 2006 to 2007—though not nearly enough to offset diving CD sales.
Much cooler, US ELPEE vinyl sales jumped from 900,000 pieces in 2006 to 1.3 million records in 2007. That's $22.9 million in 2007, up from $15.7 million in 2006. We even recently got a notice from our pressing plant that they aren't taking on any new customers for the foreseeable future and have a record backlog (pun intended) of 500,000 pieces to manufacture! (So of course we piled two new titles onto their heap just this week.)
Clearly tons of people out there still want music, and happily a chunk of them love the look, feel, sound, heft, and smell of vinyl albums. Makes us want to come to work in the morning!
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Be nice!