What is the actual percentage of people exclusively listening to vinyl vs digital?


I well remember in the ‘80s when we were amazed and thrilled by CD.
Wow, no more pops and clicks and all the physical benefits.
Seems so many abandoned vinyl.
But now, with so much convenience, available content and high SQ seems even dedicated vinylholics have again abandoned vinyl and embraced digital. However, there is clearly a new resurgence in analog.
But I look at, for example, whitecamaro’s “List of amplifiers...” thread and no one seems interested in analog!
To me, it seems strange when auditioning “$100Kish gear, that vinyl doesn’t enter the picture or conversation.
mglik
@john1
 There are verifiable statistics to guide us. In Jan. 2021 vinyl album sales were 27% of all record sales. It's only gone up since.

That study also says that vinyl accounts for only 3.6% of music consumption.

Which reflects the problem with tracking album sales the last couple of years - a lot of us who were buying dozens of CDs per year are now streaming and don't buy any albums at all. I even bought 400 Bandcamp albums (including a 200+ Buckethead Pikes set) within a four year period up until two years ago. Now we just rent a service instead. So it's not necessarily that vinyl sales are exponentially growing compared to digital, but that streaming rental is taking away its statistical competition.
@fleschler - #1-do you have these 28,000 categorized in a spreadsheet? Is this part of a record store you own?

#2- do you have them in their own special room or climate controlled garage?

#3- how many do you listen to with any regularity?

#4- how many are NM or audiophile quality and how many are $1 or less junkers you never listen to that just take up space and add to your totals?

I have been accumulating vinyl over the past 40 years (of course with the break from the late 80’s until the early 2000s when nothing was produced really) carefully, 97% new, all in NM condition with very few exceptions, and I have 300. There are a small % 10 or less that I almost never listen to and still I may not hear an album for months. I probably listen 15 hours a week on average. The most I’ve ever bought at once is 3-4 with the exception of The Beatles MFSL Collection, which has 14. 
Just curious. I can’t think of anywhere over 1000 that I would even consider, but I have no classical, hiphop or rap, unless you count the Moody Blues Days of Future Passed on MFSL.
1.  A. I have 15,000 LPs/4,500 CDs/2,000 78s categorized (not on file cards any longer) on my computer. 
B. I do not own a record store.   I have sold 18,000 records in past.  I have a rule once I hear a record, if I won't potentially listen to three times annually, out it goes.   If it has low musical merit and mediocre sound, out it goes.
2. Also, the LPs, 7,000 CDs and 4,500 78s are stored in a climate controlled, storage room located adjacent to my main listening room.  The remaining records include are stored mostly in stable temperature storage shelving in a storage shed and several garages.  They are kept dry and clean.
3.  I listened for 2 hours on Friday and 2.5 hours Saturday.  I switch off between CDs and LPs on the same day or alternate days, depending on what I want to listen to.  I have become lazier and listen to 78s less often.  30% of my 78 collection is ethnic music which is mostly unavailable on LP or CD.
4.  A. About 75% of my LPs and 50% of my 78s are in NM condition.  Nearly all my CDs are NM and play M.  As to being junkers, I don't collect junkers.   I do have in storage, NM condition multiple duplicate opera LP sets (1000?) which probably have a value of $1/LP.  They were either gifted or purchased really cheaply.   I have for example, a collection of 300 RCA Living Stereo and 100 Mercury Living Presence, 150 London/Decca, 100 Audiophile Label, 100 MGM LPs which I have not cataloged and are on shelving across from the main collection.   I pull out listening LPs from both the cataloged and uncataloged (but in numerical order) sections (and put them back where they belong).   I don't know when I will get to the non-listening room records,   
B. I listen 2 to 2.5 hours per night to music, sometimes more on weekends and now able to share music listening post pandemic.  That's a lot of fun as well as reading.  I have 3,500 books and periodicals in two libraries and read/scan three newspapers daily along with TheDailyWire and FoxNews (I used to be a Moynihan/Jackson "liberal" in the 60s and voted for Clinton and Gore but that changed with Obama/Biden).  
C. I am married with no children living at home.   My wife is usually busy with her toastmaster hobby (an former international governor of the year) teaching and on zoom meetings while I indulge in my music listening and reading.
D. I began collecting/listening when I was 2+ years old with 300 records by age 5 (my parents indulged me with "junkers" and cheapy records.  
E.  I moved two years ago to a nice size home (5,600 ft) to store and enjoy life now that I'm 65.  No congestion with separate rooms and libraries.
@fleschler 

Good that you are keeping track of the majority of your records. My brother in law probably has 1500-2000 records and ends up buying the same record twice (not to get a better pressing, usually the same one). He also doesn't dust them with a brush when he plays them, which drives me nuts when I see him do that. I guess all vinyl enthusiasts have to be at least a little OCD. He only listens to vinyl.

So you listen to at least 45,000 records a year. Average length - 40 minutes = 1,800,000 minutes = 500 hours a year, just on records, assuming you only listen to each record exactly 3 times. Assuming you have some favorites and listen to them more often, that leaves little time if any for listening to CDs and 78's. 

I bet there are plenty of the 15,000 records you don't get around to listening to, in addition to the other 13,000 stored elsewhere. If you never listen to them, why not get rid of them?

I am sure you are reading while listening to the stereo, which is usually what I do.

Glad that you are enjoying life now, I am lucky that I did about 10 years earlier than you, when I started my business after my kids finally moved off the payroll a few years ago. Didn't move into a mansion though....If anything, I would downsize a bit, but I think we are staying put despite never using 4-5 rooms.


I do not want to hear about politics, religion, or sex on this forum - it is about being an audiophile, and frankly, this forum is contentious enough without injecting that junk into the conversation.

From my point of view, although the demographic of this forum may be mostly older individuals, the members have a quality that younger people do not - they have decades of accumulated knowledge. There is no single correct way to reproduce music - 78, 45, and 33 rpm records can be great, CDs (SACD, UHQR, HDCD, XRCD, UHR-MQA, Redbook PCM, etc) can be great, DSD, ALAC, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV can be great. Enough already!

How many of you are trained musicians? As in actually attending a music conservatory as a student, playing an instrument as a performer (including your larynx), or taught music to others (e.g., music theory or musical performance). Listening is a skill that combines innate genetic qualities combined with years of focused experience, just like the best musicians combine prodigy with practice. It trumps training as an electrical engineer in the context of evaluating audio reproduction - when I see the so-called "objectivists" who only look at measures produced by devices I know they are wrong. My advice is that everyone go back to listening and fight with each other on Facebook or somewhere else.