Time for our weekly look at the Canadian sales fight between CDs and vinyl
I remember being on the air in late 1999 and saying “If you’re thinking of every buying a turntable, better do it now because vinyl is going extinct.” Yeah, well, that didn’t age well did it?
Back then, CDs were king. Vinyl? Restricted to collectors and DJs yet to move onto CD mixing decks. But since 2008, vinyl has gone on a sales tear and has reached a point where it’s challenging CDs for supremacy in the physical music space.
Where are we this week? Luminate has these Canadian sales figures.
- Total CDs sold all across Canada so far this year: 957,595. (Down 15.9% from this time last year)
- Fresh vinyl sold so far this year: 845,562 (Up 28.1% from this point in 2023).
- CDs sold in Canada in the last week: 34,586 (Up 3.9% from the week previous)
- Vinyl sold in that same period: 29,132 (Up 15.4% from a week earlier)
Finally, your streaming numbers:
- Streams in Canada so far this year: 81,640,157,474 (up 11.1% from a year ago)
- Streams in Canada last week: 2,748,240,305 (Down 0.2% from last week)
I don’t understand why anyone would want to buy a CD. It’s the a slightly less compressed digital than what’s on Spotify, Apple Music or any other streaming platform. It’s missing the fullness of sound. We don’t even own a CD player anymore. The only hard-copy we buy now is vinyl. Alan, a question: Do you count Discogs purchases in your vinyl album tally? I buy most of my stuff there. Used vinyl purchases not being counted will definitely skew your count.