A great tool for visualizing the current state of the recorded music market is the RIAA’s U.S. Sales Database, which allows you to to filter and sort record sales data in numerous ways. Here’s a screen shot of overall sales since 1973. Although this only represents sales in the US, it still provides some perspective on the much-discussed rebirth of LP records and, lately, cassettes. The green-coded items are all some form of streaming, while LP record sales are in dark blue. It may be hard to see current LP sales in this screenshot, but they are at the tips of the bars representing the past few years. The big orange blob in the middle of the chart documents the rise and fall of the CD.