Digital Sales Vs. Physical Sales and young vs older artists fanbase..

[spliz]

I been thinking about this for a while. I think the sales numbers some of these legends have isn’t indicative of what their actual sales potential is. For instance. U can clearly see this when u look at some of these cats actual sales vs streaming. Someone like Lil Baby will sell 150-200k and the actual sales will be like 9k. Someone like Nas can sell 60-70k and actual sales will be like 30-40k. I think the biggest issue is someone like a Nas’ fanbase ain’t really streaming music all day. Day and night. Their lives don’t even enable them to do shyt like that and that’s not how their used to consuming music. They would rather cop the album. And bump it when they can bump it. The problem is the industry is making it WAY harder to actually purchase music. U can barely find music in stores anymore. Meanwhile a Lil Baby fan will literally listen to the same shyt all day all night and stream it from their phone all day all night. Driving them streaming numbers up. I believe if there was more music available to actually purchase. The older legendary artists would sell more records out the gate. Not saying it would be the difference between going gold or plat or whatever. But I think the numbers would be far better than they have been. I think Jay Z is gonna run into that same issue this time around if he drops something.

 

[Larry]

If you buy a CD in 2021, I’m looking at you crazy. I don’t care how old you are.. adapt to modern technology my g


shyt is like buying a vhs in 2005 when DVD’s were obviously the new normal


My whip ain’t even got a disk drive. shyt is a dead technology

 

[Playaz Eyez]

If you buy a CD in 2021, I’m looking at you crazy. I don’t care how old you are.. adapt to modern technology my g


shyt is like buying a vhs in 2005 when DVD’s were obviously the new normal

Kinda bad comparison here, as vhs was shoddy quality even at its peak, and CDs are amazing quality. I haven’t bought a CD since I fully got into streaming years ago, and even before then I was just buying digital stuff and having an external hard drive.

But in general, nothing is better than original hard copy stuff, no matter how convenient streaming is. Samples get changed up all the time without notice, and with more and more consolidation of companies and such, it get to a point where a music bubble bursts, and some of y’all will be left with nothing but air and memories

 

[Larry]

Kinda bad comparison here, as vhs was shoddy quality even at its peak, and CDs are amazing quality. I haven’t bought a CD since I fully got into streaming years ago, and even before then I was just buying digital stuff and having an external hard drive.

But in general, nothing is better than original hard copy stuff, no matter how convenient streaming is. Samples get changed up all the time without notice, and with more and more consolidation of companies and such, it get to a point where a music bubble bursts, and some of y’all will be left with nothing but air and memories

I think it’s just a collectors mentality. I get it.


Some people like owning things


But me, I literally don’t care. I just wanna hear the shyt. I don’t need to possess it

 

[Piff Perkins]

I always find it fascinating to look at rock and country music sales vs rap. Even relatively young-ish pop/country artists like Taylor Swift still sell a lot of physical copies. You'll look at an album chart and see some random country artist you've never heard of doing relatively high physical numbers, regardless of whether it's a younger or older artist. I can't figure out the demographics of all this. But I agree with the OP that for rap, when an older artist drops an album his/her fanbase thinks "ok I'm going to buy this on iTunes or in the store." Whereas when Lil Baby drops, the young fan says "ok I'm going to stream this on Spotify/Apple/youtube."

Speaking of Taylor Swift again, just last week I saw that she sold 40k in VINYL. Highest one week vinyl sales for an album since the 1990s. Pretty insane. I dunno what it is about that particular demographic of white girls that results in physically purchasing music, whereas other demographics of white girls don't.

DAMN is the last rap album to go plat off pure physical sales, and I really think it'll be the last one to do it. That was 2017.

 

[spliz]

I always find it fascinating to look at rock and country music sales vs rap. Even relatively young-ish pop/country artists like Taylor Swift still sell a lot of physical copies. You'll look at an album chart and see some random country artist you've never heard of doing relatively high physical numbers, regardless of whether it's a younger or older artist. I can't figure out the demographics of all this. But I agree with the OP that for rap, when an older artist drops an album his/her fanbase thinks "ok I'm going to buy this on iTunes or in the store." Whereas when Lil Baby drops, the young fan says "ok I'm going to stream this on Spotify/Apple/youtube."

Speaking of Taylor Swift again, just last week I saw that she sold 40k in VINYL. Highest one week vinyl sales for an album since the 1990s. Pretty insane. I dunno what it is about that particular demographic of white girls that results in physically purchasing music, whereas other demographics of white girls don't.

DAMN is the last rap album to go plat off pure physical sales, and I really think it'll be the last one to do it. That was 2017.

EXACTLY.

 

[spliz]

If you buy a CD in 2021, I’m looking at you crazy. I don’t care how old you are.. adapt to modern technology my g


shyt is like buying a vhs in 2005 when DVD’s were obviously the new normal

Bro. Older people buy music. Regardless of format. And the industry is making it harder to do that. shyt even ITunes isn’t as simple to navigate as it used to be once Apple Music got introduced. Older people like to actually buy the album and be done with it. These newer fans will stream shyt all day. And not buy shyt. That’s not how older hip hop fans move. An older person may be completely well versed in streaming and actually have subscriptions. But they not streaming shyt all day. Which is needed for shyt to be counted as a sale. Muthafukkas don’t even have the time to be streaming music all day. And it hurts the sales in the long run. Even if the project is added to the library and the person loves the artist.

 

[Retired Account]

If you look at nas's streaming, his older classic stuff has way more streams. Do older fans prefer the older music they grew up on?

 

[Sad Bunny]

1500 streams equal one sale.

I believe that's because they generate the same revenue.

It's really not that hard to grasp.

My car doesn't even have a CD Player.

 

[Solo_87]

If you look at nas's streaming, his older classic stuff has way more streams. Do older fans prefer the older music they grew up on?

Nostalgia

For most our taste in music peaks when we are teens

 

[Ziggiy]

If you buy a CD in 2021, I’m looking at you crazy. I don’t care how old you are.. adapt to modern technology my g


shyt is like buying a vhs in 2005 when DVD’s were obviously the new normal

You can stream AND cop physical copies.


Vinyl Sales gave only gone UP over the years and have become a hot form of physical media nowadays. Artists like Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface, etc are capitalizing on their fans sense of nostalgia by offering Cassette versions of their new projects for release.


There’s still a market for physical media, even if never will be what it once was.

 

[Juggalo Fred]

Real juggalos still buy cds

 

[SpacelySprockets]

shyt even lloyd banks is outselling durk and baby on itunes while durk and baby blow him out of the water on streaming.. its a generational difference in fanbases and how they consume music

you have one artist whos popularity peak was when purchasing music and listening to CDs was the norm and another whos peak is with streaming at the forefront so artist A's fanbase will be more accustomed to consuming music a certain way compared to artist B's fanbase

 

[Solo_87]

If you buy a CD in 2021, I’m looking at you crazy. I don’t care how old you are.. adapt to modern technology my g


shyt is like buying a vhs in 2005 when DVD’s were obviously the new normal

True

Some artist dont release their music or all of their albums to streaming services tho

And artist like Taylor Swift give their fans perks if they purchase the physical/digital copy

 

[spliz]

1500 streams equal one sale.

I believe that's because they generate the same revenue.

It's really not that hard to grasp.

My car doesn't even have a CD Player.

Son that’s YOU. And it’s not about CD’s. Even with digital. It’s harder to just purchase and be done with it. It’s not as simple with Apple Music being in the fold. U gotta go thru a whole nother app to even purchase the music. Not only that. Even with streaming. Older people ain’t sitting around just streaming shyt all day. It’s just not what’s happening. They may have the streaming services. But the way they listen to music and the manner that they listen to music is different than the younger gen. Which is why they don’t benefit from the streaming shyt as much. I mean the fukking proof is in the pudding man. It’s the reason why Lil Baby went plastic with actual album sales vs streaming. Someone who sells half as him in streaming is selling triple than him in actual sales.