Off: The Year in Music

[QUEST]

On Thu, 9 Jan 1997, John A Swartz quoted:
> Record sales totaled 616.6 million an increase of less than 1% over
> 1995.  Revenue was flat at $12 billion, same as last year.  <-----No
> growth for this market is a bad sign. Compare to 1994 when the market
> tripled from $4 billion in annual sales to $12 billion.

And then he wrote:
> I've heard a big reason for this has to do with in the past, people were
> buying alot more CDs to replace their old vinyl/cassettes/8-tracks, but
> now alot of people's collections are filled, so they aren't buying as
> many CDs now.  Of course (with my "old fart" hat firmly in place) another
> big reason is that alot of the music out there today sucks ;-)

I go with the latter.  I would think that about 90% of CD sales have
always been new releases, as opposed to replacement of vinyl/8tracks.
Just looking at the Billboard charts will reveal that much.

Of course, I've been wrong before.

Damon