Music, in today's world, is all over the place. At one time, a person had to go to a music store to purchase the latest genre of music. Now, that same person can sit in comfort of their home and get up-to-date songs immediately. They can either buy the music through websites like iTunes and Amazon or online stores like Target and Best Buy.
Despite plenty of accessibility, digital track sales and CD album sales are down, according to Nielsen Entertainment and Billboards 2013 Mid-Year Music Industry Report.
In 2012, 698 million digital tracks were sold compared to 682.2 million sold in 2013. As for CD album sales, they had the biggest drop - in 2012, 91.1 million copies were sold compared to the low 78.2 million copies sold halfway through 2013.
However, vinyl and digital album sales have gone up. Vinyl album sales have increased by 33.5 percent, while digital album sales increased by 6.3 percent.
Daft Punk's album "Random Access Memories" is on top of the charts with 32,000 vinyl records sold so far this year. Justin Timberlake's latest effort, "The 20/20 Experience", is leading the way for digital album sales with 869,000 units sold.
The year is not over yet, but the year could possibly end on a high note for physical CD's and digital track sales. If not, then vinyl and digital album sales will help them even the playing field.
Eric Friedl, one of the owners of Goner Records, gave his own opinion on why people are still buying music rather than getting it for free.
"We have a wide variety of stuff, kind of our specialty," Friedl said. "We sell new records and our specialty for that is kind of punk, rock and Memphis music. But as far as used records, we sell a little bit of everything like rock-n-roll, gospel, jazz, blues, soul, funk and country."
Friedl said that vinyl records are the store's top seller and people come everyday to buy records that are old or new.
"That's 90 percent of our business probably," Friedl said.
Friedl said that vinyl has made a comeback and people seem more interested in playing vinyl records than physical CD's, MP3 players or iPods.
"People are just more interested in something that they can play," Friedl said. "Vinyl records are things that people just love for some reason. I play records as well. I play music on my iPhone, but I would rather have a vinyl record. When I am at home, I like to pull out a record that I can play rather than listening to it on my phone."
Dan O'Brien, general manager at Spin Street, feels that the comeback of vinyl records has a lot to do with the generations.
"I think there's two reasons why. It's basically two generations that have gone through and don't know what vinyl is, and vinyl actually has this sense of collectivity," O'Brien said. "A sense of warmth, a sense of getting to know what the artist truly is and with downloads you don't get that anymore."
Jonathan Frazer, associate professor of music at the U of M, truly loves vinyl records and reminisces about the days when he was buying records on a weekly basis.
"So, what I like most about them was the ritual of having to cherish the physical media as much as I did the music," Frazer said. "The physical media had value whereas the CD's doesn't have any value except you can copy it."
Frazer also mentioned how people would come together and listen to music when a new record came out.
"People used to get together and listen to music," Frazer said. "People were like 'Hey I got a new record, so come on over my house to listen to it.' We would put it in, sit around on the floor and listen to the whole record. And you don't get that with CD's."
