It is hard to imagine the modern world without music – we listen to it at home, at concerts or on the way to work with headphones. Over the past 50 years, many different music formats have been used to access our favorite songs, reflecting society’s transition from analog to digital sources.
Visual Capitalist offers a look at how different music formats sold between 1973 and 2021 in a video based on data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Vinyl
By the late 1980s, vinyl dominated the music format industry, generating billions of dollars in sales annually. Records of “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen or “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd became some of the best-selling albums.
Stereo 8 (8 Track)
8 Track appeared in the USA in 1964 and was mass produced until 1982. The peak of the format’s popularity came in the late 1960s and 1970s, when it was widely used in car players and radios. The 8 Track cartridge used analog magnetic tape and provided 90 minutes of continuous music playback.
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Sales of Stereo 8 cassettes soared to a peak of $900 million in 1978.
Cassettes
In the early 1980s, 8 Track advanced cassettes that were more user-friendly than their predecessors. By 1989, the cassette format had reached its peak revenue of $3.7 billion.
CDs
First released in 1982, the compact disc or CD appeared on the music market as a successor to the vinyl record. Sales of the sleek portable CD player, developed by Philips and Sony, grew rapidly as home and car stereos quickly added the necessary functionality.
The format generated $13.3 billion in revenue in both 1999 and 2000. Currently, no other music format has achieved such an indicator.
Digital music formats
Since the early 2000s, the widespread use of the Internet and the introduction of digital music available through downloads have pushed sales of music CDs into a precipitous decline.
The launch of streaming platforms such as Spotify in 2006 exacerbated the format’s decline, with CD sales falling by an estimated $4 billion over five years.
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In 2007, ringtone sales alone brought in $1.1 billion, and in 2012, revenue from downloads jumped to a peak of $2.9 billion. Music streaming platforms continued to grow through 2021 and are likely to remain the primary source of music consumption for a long time to come.
In 2021, streaming platforms provided the music industry with a whopping $11.5 billion in sales. If their popularity and availability continue to grow, the format could potentially challenge the popularity of CDs in the late 90s.
Is the harvest coming back?
There is no doubt that digital music formats are becoming more and more popular every year. However, one of our oldest and favorite music formats – the vinyl record – seems to be making a comeback. According to the RIAA database, vinyl records/album sales will reach $1 billion in 2021, the highest since the mid-1980s.
