Let's get physical

摘要

The BPI's recent annual report on UK music sales inspired this month's in-depth Hi-Fi News Investigation [p24], and I'm bound to say that it makes fascinating reading. But while we reveal the formats and services that are surging up the charts, and those in decline, many of these trends are not only mutually exclusive but neither are they replicated all over the music-listening world.rnAn example of exclusivity is provided by the rise of vinyl sales alongside the fall in CD sales, all within a dwindling market for physical media as a whole. Zealots of the black stuff will have you believe that the LP is successfully undermining CD -that the former is witnessing revival at the expense of the latter. Now, while I'm delighted that heavyweight vinyl is now available at a quality that we might only have dreamed of during the oil-stricken '70s and '80s, this assertion does not bear close examination.