"Converging towards zero"

You may be under the impression that vinyls and cds are on the rise. It's not your fault. Media present a sanitized image of a positive trend. The vinyl revival, also known as the vinyl resurgence, is a hard-to-kill myth. I saw a funny comic strip in my social media feed the other day: "The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience". The cd hype is even harder to understand. There's no second wave or revival. If you compare the sales of physical formats with the sales of digital albums (downloads), then there's a significant rise since the latter are definitely on the decline. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. I follow the statistics from the Swedish branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The statistics for Sweden in 2024 has been published recently. The revenues from cd sales amounted to 2 percent of total revenues (while vinyls amounted to 3 percent). Both formats are declining in absolute and relative terms. So much for the resurgence. CD sales peaked in 2000. Thereafter, cd sales began to decline. First gradually, then rapidly. I live in the most anxious and trend-sensitive country in the world. Everybody is streaming. Very few own a high-end stereo. My rescue is that the rest of world are more slow-moving. Albums are still coming out in the cd format, albeit to a lesser extent. The gothic country genre isn't spared, on the contrary. We were the early victims. We are converging towards zero.