Audiophile Marketshare?

[oudplayer]

I'd be interested in knowing this too -- it seems a growing number of people are doing stuff for HDTracks, I'm probably going to put a bunch of albums up there as an experiment, but I have yet to see any hard statistics about how many people are actually purchasing from there or the few other similar services.

[GYang]

Between 0,1-0,11% globally, in the States may be better, may be 0,15%. Very narrow niche business. On the other hand, who can be able to make really true statistics on that? Manufacturers? Advertisers? Shops?
I guess - gearslutzs

[mike11]

I think there's going to be a growing trend moving towards higher quality sound over the next decade as more and more people realise there is better and care enough to find out what that means (speaking of mp3 downloads). You will always have people who don't care. But there are always going to be those that do. And I think it's going to keep building slowly, but a lot was lost over the last 20 years, and I think there's a huge potential for rediscovery - not only of vinyl - but the next best thing to "being there" (master tape), which is 96/192/HD formats. The music market is a think potentially much larger. And you don't have to compete with music stores - the digital revolution is already done, now you just have to garner market share from the big boys who've already shown it an be done, and how. With the flac formats on those sites, you can have your digital download as well - no need to buy a boxed version. Why not have one price for flac file, and another price for boxed multiformat disc version, plus a download so you can listen right away. If I was them I would match itunes pricing or maybe make it a dollar over for an album download only, just to pay the bandwidth / processing costs but otherwise why not compete with itunes. Make more money on physical packaging for those who like physical liner notes etc. Make it something desirable, cool and interesting to own (like a good LP is). This 17$ an album for a digital download business with todays bandwidth costs doesn't make sense to me. Why not give people an incentive to try it out at least. They can always encode an mp3 on their machine. Better yet, have an mp3 version or AAC version for your ipod, and a HD flac for your home stereo. Seems to me the market is so small, just being there is a good thing? Also, while there are a lot of re-releases (the origins and processing of which is rarely disclosed) I don't see a lot of material tracked and processed in HD that you can go and enjoy. It's nice to hear the master tapes but personally I find it even more interesting to hear what people are doing with it now, in many ways. At least when it comes to re-releases, I would rather at least have a clear idea ok yes it was the master tape, yes it was properly treated for the format etc. Most mac and desktop computers and even laptops being produced today all go up to 96k as standard as far as I'm aware.