http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18278037

 

Digital music sales outstrip CDs and records

 

UK digital music revenue has overtaken sales of physical formats such as CDs and records for the first time.

 

According to figures compiled by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) digital accounted for 55.5% of the £155.8m spent on music in the UK in the first three months of this year.

 

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I'm still not convinced to switch from physical to digital albums! Then again, back in the mid 2000s I felt the same way about physical singles.

Then again, back in the mid 2000s I felt the same way about physical singles.

 

Back then you had an option though, lol. Physical singles are somewhat of a rarity these days.

Indeed, but by 2007 I was happy enough to download the vast majority of singles, even when the option was still there to buy it on CD. I came around to it quite quickly, despite initial trepidation. :lol: I'm not sure if I'd feel the same when it comes to albums. No doubt in years to come I'll look back and think my attitude towards this was silly. :P

The strange thing is that I am still more likely to take to an . album if I have it on cd. Many albums took a junp up in my estimation after I got them on cd. In fact, had I not seen Bloc Party's Silent Alarm very cheap it may never have become my album of the 00s. Mp3s so the job of providing initial investigation when I'm interested in an album but it takes the purchace on cd for it to find its way into my heart.

I find that if I have an album on CD it has more personality attatched towards it, I find it easier to say "I own that album, it's brilliant." if I own the physical copy. Downloads just don't compare. Fortunately, CD albums still seem to be relatively good value, however I begrudge paying more than £2 for a new CD single, so because there are few that are lower than that price these days, I rarely buy new ones now. :( I do, however, still collect CD singles fr charity shops, car boot sales and the like! :D

 

I'm sure I'll feel comfortable purchasing digital albums in the future, but for now, there IS a better alternative at around the same price. :D

It's been almost a year since I made a purchase which wasn't digital, and it was almost a year before that one. I won't ever go back to physical now, to me it's completely redundant.

 

This year I decided to keep a record of how much I actually spent on music. In the first 5 months it was just shy of £140, and that's bought me 25 tracks, 5 EPs and 22 albums.

It's been almost a year since I made a purchase which wasn't digital, and it was almost a year before that one. I won't ever go back to physical now, to me it's completely redundant.

 

This year I decided to keep a record of how much I actually spent on music. In the first 5 months it was just shy of £140, and that's bought me 25 tracks, 5 EPs and 22 albums.

 

I tend to agree with Juranimo, in that physical formats have more... personality.

 

As for how much you spent on music - do you think you spend more on music now, thanks to downloads, than you would if you had to buy it physically?

I get a buzz from going into hmv and looking at new releases and albums on offer. i like seeing the fruits of the artists labour in a physical form. i dont think i will ever download an album if it has a physical copy. i did download amy studt's second album as there was no physical, and then they released a physical......

I tend to agree with Juranimo, in that physical formats have more... personality.

 

As for how much you spent on music - do you think you spend more on music now, thanks to downloads, than you would if you had to buy it physically?

 

I probably buy the same amount of albums as I would've done, so I'd have therefore spent significantly more! I very much doubt I'd have been able to buy 22 albums (all but two were less than 3 months old at the time of buying) at an average of less than a fiver. Physical albums take up far too much space and they don't get used often enough, from when I first got a laptop I would've bought over 100 CDs in the 2 1/2 years before I converted and I doubt anywhere near half of them have actually been played as a CD, they just get burned to my laptop and stuck on an iPod, and then filed away gathering dust. As I said, they're completely redundant to me.