Angus Kidman – anguskidman.show

JB Hi-Fi’s half-yearly results, out today, provide concrete data on something anyone walking into a JB branch has experienced: albums, CDs, games and movies do not sell as many copies as they used to.

Buried (somewhat) in the JB half-yearly investor deck is this telling comment:

Translated: we’re selling even less in these categories than we did a year ago, despite all that high-priced vinyl.

It’s the same in New Zealand stores, albeit with a slightly larger chunk of revenue. Across the ditch, those categories were 6.2% of sales, down from 6.5% in the same period the year before.

This is no shock. In a streaming universe, all physical media is basically a specialist collector market – even all those Taylor Swift vinyl variants.

I love CDs, and more people buy CDs than vinyl, but we spend far more time on Spotify and Apple Music and Tidal et al than with any physical media. Same for movies. Marvel collectors like their discs, but most folks just turn to Netflix and its competitors.

So the next time someone claims there’s a “vinyl revival” happening, just bear these numbers in mind. The fact that ALDI and Coles occasionally sell vinyl records doesn’t mean we’re seeing a revival of when vinyl was the main listening format. We’re seeing a fragmented music market in which physical media is a small-but-still-profitable segment of a largely digital universe.