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Another interesting surprise is that CDs are still bringing in close to the gross $ volume of cassettes at their peak. The music industry got fat partly on global sales, but also partly because they were making such a huge margin on CDs, even though they were cheaper and took up less shelf space than records.

When I was a techno DJ I spent a lot of money on both vinyl and CDs in my preferred genre (I was happy to support tiny niche labels), but I bought all my mainstream music on used CDs - they usually played fine and it was a lot cheaper. I would never have done this when vinyl was king and have never bought a cassette, ever.



> Another interesting surprise is that CDs are still bringing in close to the gross $ volume of cassettes at their peak.

It's not. The graph does not adjust the dollar amounts for inflation. (Or if it does it doesn't say so).

So the tape sales were more than they look.


Yes it does. I made the same mistake, but read the title: 'value of units shipped for 1973 to 2008, in billions of current dollars'.




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