Here's how vinyl releases before the streaming date can tap superfans of artists, driving word of mouth and revenue.
A time-tested revenue model in the theater and concert world is to price the front seats highest, and sell them early to the act’s dedicated followers, then fill out the house with cheap seats to optimize cash flow and lower risk. Recorded music does the opposite: when an album drops, an artist’s music is immediately available on all streaming services to every subscriber, leaving no room for passionate fans to self-select into pricier options.
Analog is surging in book publishing, too, as printed books are now outselling their digital counterparts 4-to-1 and bookstores are ascending. Not long ago that would have seemed inconceivable. Management guru Peter Drucker once quipped that “the customer rarely buys what the company thinks it’s selling him.” In the case of vinyl, over half of buyers don’t even own a record player. So they’re not buying the music — they’re buying merchandise that gives them a sense of identity and connection to the artist. With streaming, you merely press your thumb on a piece of glass; owning, holding and displaying a curated vinyl record with unique artwork has much deeper meaning to a fan.
Vinyl is not without its challenges. Measuring the size of its remarkable continued success story is just one. Recent changes by Luminate, the go-to source for industry data, wiped off 40% of the measured volume overnight, by flipping from extrapolating the size of the market to counting only those who opt in. That’s getting, and will assuage the people it’s upset, but the point remains, there’s way more vinyl being purchased than Luminate measures.There are other challenges, too.
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Vinyl records outsold CDs for the second year runningAndrew Paul is Popular Science‘s staff writer covering tech news. Previously, he was a regular contributor to The A.V. Club and Input, and has had recent work featured by Rolling Stone, Fangoria, GQ, Slate, NBC, as well as McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He lives outside Indianapolis.
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