Happy Sunday, everyone! I have slowly (and unintentionally) slipped into “summer mode.” I have been working only a little and reading quite a lot. Last week, I also met Ken Kocienda, a former Apple software engineer and designer, to talk about art, life, photography, and watches.
I didn’t spend as much time on Twitter (either perusing or tweeting), so there isn’t a “Tweek” wrap-up for the week. But several articles caught my eye that I probably would have tweeted, and here they are:
Vinyl Is More Popular Than Ever. Surprisingly, That’s a Problem
During the pandemic, vinyl sales in the U.S. exploded, growing 28.7% in 2020 to $626 million, even beating out CD revenues of $483 million. Vinyl sales have been growing steadily over the years. Everyone (and I mean everyone) is making and selling vinyl records, including Target and Walmart. The annual demand for vinyl is between 320-400 million albums, while the total manufacturing capacity is 160 million albums per year. That is a problem for small labels. And to think, we are in the golden age of streaming — even hi-res streaming! By the way, streaming revenues were up 13.4% to $10.1 billion in 2020.
Back to the Bad Old Days of the Web – Jorge Arango
Indeed, the bad old days of browser wars and conflicting corporate interests are back.
NFT sales volume surges to $2.5 bln in 2021 first half
Yes, crypto is hot. NFT is hotter. So is the planet.
You really need to quit Twitter.
You might have already read this article. It is excellent writing and a good post for everyone to share. It was hard, but I got off Facebook and Instagram, and I even managed to limit my Twitter usage to less than 30 minutes a day. If you are a grown-up (like the author of this piece seems to be), you need to know how to exercise self-control and fight off the addictive tendencies that drive so much social media usage.
Individuals Now Spend More Time On TikTok Than YouTube, Facebook, Netflix
In a recent report, App Annie, a mobile research and analytics company, points out that the average U.S. android user spent 24.5 hours per month on TikTok, compared with 22 hours on YouTube and 17.5 hours on Facebook. Like I’ve said before, TikTok is coming for YouTube in a big way.
Dan Primack notes many all-time records set in techlandia during the first half of 2021:
- VC dollars invested: $288bn
- VC dollars invested in U.S. startups: $140bn
- Startups sold: $232bn
- 410 companies went public (Thanks, SPACs)
- 5,248 PE/VC funds looking for $900bn
[Actually, I did tweet this one 🙂 ]
I didn’t think the principled India of 1974 described in this article ever existed. That’s just one thing that makes this story so incredible.
July 11, 2021, San Francisco