At the end of 2023, Russian trading platforms noted a sharp increase in demand for music equipment for retro media – it affected vinyl record players, CDs, audio and video cassettes. Izvestia writes about this with reference to market participants.
Avito often sells authentic audio equipment produced back in the nineties, while trading platforms like Wildberries sell mostly new products that use old technologies. At Wildberries in 2023, almost twice as many CDs were sold as the year before, and the demand for players for them jumped 12 times. The administration of Yandex Market reported an annual increase in sales for these positions by 1.6 and 2.3 times, respectively. On Ozon in 2023, 2.1 times more vinyl record players were sold than in 2022, and the average price for them decreased by 9%; Most often they were bought by residents of Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Kazan, who preferred brands such as Alive Audio, Sunny Days and Record Pro.
The Avito administration reported that the demand for analog players and media grew 1.5 times last year. Sales of vinyl records doubled, and the average price increased by 10% to 2,600 rubles. The second most popular among physical media were CDs with an average price of 1,130 rubles. (demand growth by 45%), third – audio cassettes for 700 rubles. on average (demand growth by 35%). Sales of VHS videotapes increased by 3% with an average price of 3.15 rubles. In the M.Video-Eldorado network, the demand for video content on physical media (DVD and Blu-Ray) at the end of 2023 remained at the 2022 level.
In 2023, about 160 thousand record and CD players were sold in Russia, ComNews calculated – this is 1.6 times more than a year earlier, but only 0.1% of Russians chose such equipment, which means that the large increase is explained by low base effect. Russians also purchased 700 thousand vinyl discs in 2023 – for comparison, 6.1 million records were sold in the UK during the same period, and this is 11.8% more than a year earlier.
Wildberries explained the growing popularity of physical audio media and equipment for them due to nostalgic sentiments, and CDs offer high sound quality even by modern standards. On Avito, the fashion trend was associated with collectors and lovers of analog music: now on the platform there are almost 300 thousand advertisements for the sale of records, including mass-produced products and rare copies. To some extent, the growing popularity of analogue technology and media is a rebellion against the digital devices that have flooded the mass market, say experts interviewed by Izvestia. And this is good for artists who today, due to digital platforms, are forced to make money from concerts: with the return of CDs and vinyl records, they can make money from physical recordings.
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