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ALEXIS MADRIGAL
Some People (i.e. Leonard Cohen Fans) Still Buy CDs, Even Online
FEB 8 2012, 1:44 PM ET



As a tech writer, it is a good thing to remind myself that my habits are alien to most people in America. Not only do I pay for all my music, but I do it via the subscription service, Rdio, not Spotify or Pandora, or I get vinyl.

Meanwhile, out in America, there are people buying CDs. Even when these people go on to the Internet to buy music, they order the CDs and have them delivered. Billboard's latest numbers provide a perfect snapshot of the wide gulf in music purchasing behavior between (presumably) young and old. Fans of Lana Del Rey, whose album debuted at #2, one notch above Leonard Cohen's first studio album in eight years, bought downloadable music or a CD in a store. Cohen's fans were spread across brick-and-mortar retailers, downloads, and Internet CD sales.

Thirty-five percent of Cohen's new album's sales came from physical albums sold via Internet retailers. To compare, only 1% of Del Rey's first-week physical CD sales came from Internet sellers. On the other hand, 74% of Del Rey's sales were downloads, while digital sales represented 30% for Cohen.

I can understand brick-and-mortar purchases; I love a good music store as much as the next nerd. I can understand buying music for download: it's nearly instantaneous and usually a bit cheaper. But that last group, the big green slice of Leonard Cohen's pie. I do not understand them at all. Perhaps they are audiophiles who value the tiny difference between CD-quality and near-CD quality. Or perhaps they have dial-up modems that make downloading music difficult.

Whoever they might be, their consumption preference reminds us to think about the technologies that people actually use, rather than the ones they might use at some point in the future.