Albums Aren't Dead

Do you buy vinyl records? OR Do you still listen to music albums? In which format? Find out how vinyl and streaming complement each other.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
it's Christian Sager here. In the early two thousand's, the
compact disc became an endangered species. It was nearly killed
off by the rise of the MP three and peer
to peer file sharing networks like Napster. It was then

(00:22):
that we started reading the first obituaries for the album.
File sharing made it easy to download your favorite individual tracks,
upload them to your iPod, hit shuffle, and you know, enjoy.
But gone was the concept of the album listening experience,
sitting back and appreciating a musical work of art from
beginning to end. As we moved into the era of

(00:44):
legal digital downloads, things didn't look much better for the album.
Singles dominated the download charts, and some artists began ditching
the traditional album format altogether by just simply dropping new
tracks online one by one. One but too fascinating consumer
trends have emerged over the past couple of years that

(01:05):
may conspire to save the beleaguered album. First is the
dramatic rise in popularity of subscription music streaming services, and
second is the unexpected comeback of vinyl. In twenty sixteen,
vinyl sales topped four hundred and thirty five million dollars
in the United States and grabbed nearly six percent of

(01:26):
total music sales, the highest market share for records since.
Some credit vinyls resurgence to the attractive physicality of records
and a collective desire for a more personal connection with music.
Vinyl sales have been growing by ten percent each year,
and seventeen, vinyl sales are already up two percent over

(01:48):
the same period in but vinyls numbers are a drop
in the bucket compared to the explosive growth of streaming music.
In twenty sixteen, onto Mann music streaming from services like
Spotify and Apple Music overtook digital music sales as the
single most popular way to listen to music, capturing thirty

(02:10):
eight percent of total audio consumption, and it's gotten even
bigger in with Nielsen reporting a sixty two point four
percent year over year increase in on demand music streaming
compared to the same period in At first glance, the
increasing dominance of streaming audio looks like another strike against

(02:32):
the traditional album After all, Nielsen reports that in the
first six months of album sales were down nearly across
all formats, including full digital albums, individual digital tracks, and
physical albums like c d s. But there's also evidence
that at least some streaming music listeners are attracted to

(02:54):
the format precisely because it allows the kind of immersive,
old school listening experience that was missing from the digital
download era. If you need proof that streaming can actually
be a good thing for albums, look at one of
the biggest releases of Kendrick Lamar's Damn. When the album
dropped in May of last year, it immediately dominated streaming audio,

(03:18):
with a record breaking nine songs from the album appearing
in the top ten slots on Billboards on Demand streaming chart.
Another Damn track grabbed the eleventh spot as well. What
that means is that streaming listeners weren't just playing the
hit single on repeat, but they were actually listening to
the whole album, and Lamar's streaming streak wasn't a fluke.

(03:40):
Earlier in both j Cole and Drake Twice took over
the top eight spots on the Billboard streaming chart when
they released new albums. Yes, hit singles still get the
most streams overall, but there is a clear desire to
listen to full albums from important artists. In fact, there

(04:01):
seems to be a direct connection between the rebirth of
vinyl and at least some of the wild popularity of streaming.
Today's episode was written by Dave Bruce, produced by Tristan McNeil,
and For more on this and other topics, please visit

(04:22):
us at how stuff works dot com.