I refuse to use streaming services because they rip off artists. So i buy physical media where possible or pay over suggested price for downloads from co-op sites like Bandcamp.
The music industry is utterly, dysfunctionally FUBB.
Yes, the scene is FUBAR. Not even fit to be called an industry. We indie musicians deeply appreciate knowledgeable fans like you who use Bandcamp. I keep my primary store there and it's artist-friendly for sure. Soundcloud also seems to be a decent place to build up fans and revenue. All the major services, Spotify, Apple, etc...are close to meaningless from the perspective of creators, in terms of both money and marketing reach.
I love Bandcamp and put my music there first. I dislike Spotify intensely but it's kind of the devil you know. Tidal and Apple Music are somewhat better. However, *some* artists are having success building a public on streaming services, by investing in their own promotion.
Boy I have a lot to say here, but I’ll keep it short. Yes the majors don’t want to be in manufacturing. Yes the majors only care about streaming. But people who buy records and don’t have turntables are basically buying a tshirt. That is not a record buyer. Vinyl is a luxury object, so are many turntables and home stereos at this point. There are people who want lps but the fact is, and I’ve said it before, 60 million people pay to stream in the US. Such a minuscule comparative amount buy vinyl. It’s no longer, and never will be again, the premier music format. It’s there if you want, like making your own pickles, or learning how to butcher, it’s a way to connect to a different time and a different sound. Most people, including those who buy records without turntables, don’t really care. There’s no need to -woe is me- vinyl. It’s doing what it supposed to do, which is allow those types of people who want to listen to records, learn who the artist and producer is, and after 20 minutes get up and put on another one. The phone does that without all the work. The past way we used vinyl won’t repeat, why would it.
No one suggests vinyl will ever be the primary means for music consumption. Nor will gourmet dining be how most people eat. People who wish to eat at Chipotle's and think its fine dining are welcome to it. People who wish to use their phones to listen to music and think it's a swell experience are welcome to that. People who mock those who understand the pleasures of vinyl will always get a hard time from me and have for decades. I'm through being nice but now that I'm winning this war I see the other side is getting bitter and I find it funny.
Thank you for saving me the trouble of writing what would have been essentially the same thing. I teach data analysis in the music industry at NYU; this is more or less what I've been telling my students.
Vinyl is merch. You can hang it on your wall. The fact that 50% of vinyl buyers don't own turntables should have been Clue #1. I know a few people who swear by the sound and experience of playing vinyl (I like it myself!), but they are in a tiny minority.
Wow, as someone who has been buying records for 15 odd years at this point, this couldn't be more wrong. It might be merch for part of the market, but there is a massive and very dedicated market for people who buy to listen. And I'd wager that if you really do have knowledge of data analysis in the music industry it would show you that the people who own turntables and buy to listen buy many times more records per person than those who buy one copy of Taylor Swift as a souvenir.
Yale, you definitely know from which you speak. You are responsible for putting out some fantastic music, some of which was pressed at Europadisk back in the day. I worked there from ‘87-‘89 and then again for some years in the 90s. The formats change but it’s the music that’s the thing. Rock on!
I think the big question here is whether they merely like or actually know the music represented by those albums and T-shirts. Elsewhere there was a reference to “nonsensical hipster status signaling object(s)” which I think is a legitimate issue to raise. Not that I have a firm opinion either way. I don’t know enough youngish people.
young people are clueless IMHO. They are smart but yet not. maybe because I'm getting old, but they way the talk, and communicate...the way the speak...ugh. maybe i was that way 30yrs ago, but when it comes to music...kids today are truly unfortunate but yet fortunate. unfortunate because today's music is pure garbage. the music industry is pushing non musicians, and unoriginal art = 100% Gar....Baaaage! now fortunately, look at all of what kids can listen to today! some much original made, written, produced, and played (ie actual instruments not computers) there will never be another: GnR, Beatles, Queen, Ozzy, Motley, U2, Stones, i can go on.... The music today is manufactured at least in the USA. Europe seems to create music made by musicians. The US is all about whoring out who they own, not what's good. Country, Pop music and Rap n B. Rock in the US is no longer "in" no longer whored...which if you think about it the 80's debauchery was whored out and whores brought in to sell it. Then grunge happened. Few bands from that era wear great. but as a whole grunge was a bad dream. but again young people have that....all of the best music ever made, was made. getting out to everyone is cheap. i mean youtube has basically everything #free. young peoples music priorities are small scale. they are TikTok n Onlyfans, they are how many clicks can i get. music is background noise to them. and for those buying vinyl, the 12x12 in square with circle medium inside is that tangible "look what i have" conversation piece. kids growing up today aren't surrounded by music like in decades past, unless their parents introduce them to it. i feel bad for young people. we live in a over self-centered world and the young people today are just so caught up in it, but they don't have to miss out on greatness. it's out there they just have to click n listen.
Forgive me, I’m not attacking you, bc I like the bands you named here but this comment is full of conjecture and tired rockism and honestly super self-centered around your personal tastes. Your taste in music is still just your taste in music. That part will always be subjective.
More to the point, those bands you named are all from one single genre, rock, and each of those bands specifically have made TONS of bland forgettable, corporate music-product in their day, and they used live musicians to do it. Also they are all just bands you like. That’s it. I mean, when Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required came out I was only 10 but I still didn’t understand how anyone could like it, bc it sounded like a TV commercial to me (and it still does). People were saying similar things when “Sugar Sugar” was ripping up the charts. A tale as old as, well, rock.
I’m in my mid-40’s so maybe my proximity to young people is different but man, there is so much good music being made today (Ted will tell you!), it’s just not anything like 80’s rock” and boy am I grateful for that. We may live in a more atomized culture nowadays and so the most profitable and popular music may not be your favorite but the music is still being made. It just takes a little digging. Promise.
“Rockism” - one of my favourite words! It was exactly what those of us out on the front line fringes (can you be on a front line fringe?) in the mid ‘80s were fighting against. Mixed success at best I fear ‘cos obviously rockism lives on. Perhaps more of a zombie stagger now eating the eardrums of the easily impressionable.
There is a funny excersise you can do: Search for popular songs of any decade on youtube and read the comment section. For songs from the 50s till the 2010s you can find comments like the one here: Clearly, the music of THIS specific decade (which coincidentally was the era of the commenters 20s) was the best in music. After that: "Gar...Baaage!"
i do. and it's hard to talk with them. in fact i was in a record store recently and the workers in there, 1 guy in his mid/late 60's and 2 younger girls 20-23 my guess (they talked about alcohol hence my age guess) anyway thumbing through the bins, and hearing these three having a conversation was just painful. younger peoples thought processing and sentence construction is amiss. again maybe my perception is off, but hearing the hollowness in what they were saying and how they responded to the elder worker....was enough for me to leave. maybe it was them, but i felt like i was literally in room surrounded by actual bimbos. i know it's not everyone who's like this buuuut.... it's not the first time, sooo...1 bad apple spoiled the whole dam bunch..? or one older person having difficulty communicating with n listening to 3 Generations of humans born after me...you decide (I'm sure i know what way yer leaning, n that's ok)
That is not an issue to raise at all. People who buy t-shirts of bands they don’t really listen to aren’t any kind of problem. At worst, they’re signaling that they want to be associated with the band’s style--and it almost never means they *don’t like* the artist. It’s just fashion! Applying a litmus test to everyone who wears a band tee or an album on whether they *really* like them, *that* is a problem. Music is for the people, not just for audiophiles or fanatics. It’s just pointless gate keeping that does nothing for music.
Thank you for your invitation. I have considered it and have more to say. Firstly, if you read what I said I was not “casually insulting a generation.” I was asking a question, pointing to comments made elsewhere, and admitting that I did not know the answers. If anyone is doing any casual insulting it is you by misrepresenting my remark.
However, now we’re here, I’ll add that I am of the general opinion that buying vinyl when one doesn’t even own a turntable is weird. Further, I recognize that there are some big brand names of classic rock that receive mass adulation and who manage to sell vinyl as T-shirts. I do not have to praise those who buy such things. I think they’re consumerist lemmings. There was a trend some time ago for youngish people to wear tour T-shirts from classic rock bands on tour long before they were born. These I would say is ersatz to a ridiculous degree. I think the idea of representing your cultural affiliation to long ago musical expressions that were frankly dubious even in their time is an indication of superficial understanding at best.
If this describes your children, too bad. Not my problem.
Just my personal opinions. There is obviously room for many other opinions. I don’t expect many to share mine because, if that were the case, classic rock would be well and truly buried and not doing the zombie stagger it is currently doing through the sale of replicant LPs.
"...I’ll add that I am of the general opinion that buying vinyl when one doesn’t even own a turntable is weird."
I totally agree with that and the rest of your commentary. Keeping my Technics linear tracking turntable and top of the line Pioneer (from when Pioneer was actually top of the line) in good working order is difficult, to say the least. I also have my Journey "Escape" concert T, not to mention a few Buffett Ts and can still fit into them with no problem. I also recognize that I'm simply old and don't particularly like current technology, having stopped with CDs. Easy doesn't make anything sound better.
I doubt even Buffett can fit into his Ts any longer. Looks like he’s going on the road in March. Chance for more merch!
A Technics linear tracking turntable is an interesting component to have. Must be quite rare. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one and had forgotten they existed. I can understand why they’re difficult to keep in working order. Some technologies are more elegant and rugged than others. I have a pair of SL1200s from the early ‘80s and I’m hoping they out live me. So far, so good. They are near bomb proof. I do baby them a bit. Finally bought road cases for them, but they’ve just sat in my studio for years now.
Did I say “that the music that young people care about isn’t music and then to go on to characterize their enjoyment of music as some kind of empty status signifier”? No, I didn’t. Another comment from another person. Perhaps you have been enjoying too many “canned dog food and banana sandwiches” with their well known psychotropic qualities yourself to understand the words before you on a screen and who is responsible for them. It’s difficult, I know. You have to actually follow a conversation. As it is, you repeatedly misrepresent what I write which makes me wonder just how many bricks shy of a full load you are.
Further, the idea that “all of recorded music is laid out like a buffet” is rubbish. Common, it’s true - I’ve read it again and again for literally decades by various digital propagandists - but it’s the sort of ignorant comment made by people who have no idea of what they’re talking about when it comes to the vast panoply of recorded music. There is undoubtedly a significant selection readily available, but “like a buffet”? And “all of recorded music”? You simply don’t know, do you?
Retromania is Petromania. 😂 my sides. Some of you who tote around I-phones so you can stream anywhere there’s wifi, should look at how lithium and other precious metals are mined. And your worried about the environmental impact of vinyl records. It’s such a petty argument. Like straw grasping petty.
God, no! Hardly ever. Not for years. Haven’t crossed the Atlantic since 2002. Maybe four flights to California from Washington in the same twenty years. Hate the experience for one and I’m pretty hardcore environmentalist by most people’s standards. Deliberately childless, drive less than fifty miles a week, heat pumps, solar panels, etc. etc. Probably your worst nightmare. Buy quite a few CDs, also your nightmare if I’ve read you correctly, plus even some vinyl, so I’m not a completely lost case.
I worked at a NYC audiophile record pressing plant, Europadisk, in the late 80s and 90s. We created the highest quality records, had in house Direct Metal Mastering (where the state of the art ended), in house electro plating and several machines pressing the highest quality German Teldec vinyl (ie, quietest - less tics and pops, good bass frequencies). What I know for sure is that making this quality vinyl record was as much an art as it was a manufacturing process, with a wide variety of potential costly problems to deal with on a daily basis - inconsistent vinyl pellets, delays and volatile imported vinyl costs, minute issues with plated production parts (stampers), issues with steam generation which the pressing machines rely on, broken machine parts which were difficult to obtain back in the day and probably more so now, and on and on. I think we’re way too far down the digital road to ever realistically get back to a profitable place with vinyl when digital is cheaper, and yes in many cases sounds better (cue the squeals of dismay). Also, vinyl is a petroleum product, and how could it ever make sense to dig in deep with this technology again when it seems the goal in todays world is to eradicate anything having to do with it?
I loved my vinyl records for as long as that made sense. Still have them. Don’t play them. The musician/artist side of me wishes there was still a decent market in which to sell physical product. But I live in the world as it is now and deal with the positive and negative as best I can.
I love your essays, and this one was 100% correct, but only fails to take into account the world (for better or worse) as we find it regarding the economy and the ever falling value our world places on music.
All very good points, especially the part about vinyl production being as much an art as a manufacturing process. Finding people who understand how to cut a good lacquer and do the electro-plating process and all the other extremely complicated things that aren't just a matter of pushing a button is really hard these days. Most of the ones who are really good at it are getting on in years, and it's not something you really can teach someone in a short period, especially at the higher skill levels.
“… digital is cheaper, and yes in many cases sounds better (cue the squeals of dismay)”
Oh man, you went there! I’ve long thought the absolute claims of “vinyl sounds better“ were dubious at best, and often just wrong.
I’m coming at this as a fan of vinyl. I love the act of interacting with a physical medium, and spent many hours of my youth listening to records while reading the album covers and looking at the pictures (often so many times, those images are burned into my memories).
Of course, I’ve heard some awesome pressings, and had wonderful experiences of listening to vinyl.
But yeah, there are times when a high quality recording, mixed and mastered by thoughtful artists of the time/genre, delivered digitally is the superior experience.
I have not expressed this amongst my group of friends because I know there’s a giant argument looming if I do.
I remain a fan of the format, but I don’t agree that it is automatically a better listening experience.
Then you know that a $3.98 record in 1966 would cost around $30 today and the claim that records today are overpriced is absurd on its face along with the rest of this story written by someone who is clueless..
Mmm...I don't know that this is strictly true. In that era of vinyl there were *millions* of records being produced from plants all over the world, and thus each unit was vastly cheaper to make & distribute. In this era, even a pressing run of 10,000 is considered huge (think Taylor Swift level artists). Economies of scale make a huge difference in production cost. Doing a pressing run that's more in the range of most independent artists (i.e. between 100-1000 copies) means each copy is far more expensive to make, and the profit margin for the artist/label that much smaller.
Your numbers are way off! One major plant in 2013 pressed 26 million records alone. I'm looking at a confidential industry spread sheet I was sent for that year. It's gotten much bigger a decade later. 10,000 is not "huge". Taylor Swift sold 1.7 MILLION records in 2022 across her catalog. Harry Styles sold 719,000. 10,000+ is what most Tone Poet $40 Blue Note jazz reissues sell! They sell out and need to be re-pressed.
Are you honestly saying that the number of records being pressed today has *any* comparison to the number of records being pressed in 1966? Or in any of the peak years of vinyl as a format? It's a mere shadow of the size the industry used to be.
The vast number of artists I see pressing records have runs of 100-1000 records, most between 100-500. I worked at the largest record store in TX (Josey Records) between 2016-2020. Every time we'd get in some new random Taylor Swift record, the numeration on the back was typically "__/10,000", which seemed the standard pressing run for any given variant of her albums. If you're not talking about mega-popular artists like her, or eternal mainstays like The Beatles, the simple fact is that pressing runs are quite small, and profit margins are too.
The cost of getting the metal stampers, electroplating, proper lacquers, possibly having to do multiple test-press runs to get the sound right, etc etc are all fixed costs. If you can't afford to do a huge pressing run, you're stuck having to charge more for each record just to break even, much less make a profit.
I never said anything like that. Not sure from where you got that. The "special edition" numbered Swifts might be "of 10,000" but she sold 1.7 million records in 2022 and that's the ones that were counted. The numbers are far higher. Yes, the smaller artists who go on the road and sell their records at tables press fewer numbers but I'm glad they make them and sell them. I'm well aware of the process. I've been covering it for decades. Small runs are costly.
Jan 14, 2023·edited Jan 14, 2023Liked by Ted Gioia
One of my daughters is into vinyl, so I bought her a turntable and bluetooth speaker set up she enjoys. But it took many weeks, maybe months, to get those Beyonce and Taylor Swift LPs she ordered. A rebrand of the old East Coast (Boston area) record store Newbury Comics has a busy Long Island mall store with manga, K-pop merch, and new vinyl, but even my daughter thought it wasn't worth it for me to buy her the new Lana Del Rey album or whatever for $30-$40. And $30 appears to be ground level for most new vinyl.
And I used to think $14.99 was outrageous for a vinyl. I worked at Peaches Records and Tapes in the late 70’s early 80’s. I have several “peach” crates full of oldies but goodies. Guess they’re worth something after all.
I recall when you could buy a lot of the records that you see at newbury comics now for $5 to $10 on clearance, only even on sale just to get them out of the backroom. Kudos to those who either held onto them or knew that a vinyl resurgence was due sooner or later! Yes, it's very likely a lot of those records have significant value, although because of the resurgence, the market is flooded with a lot of the most popular records, so many of the ones you might think are big money are actually around that $5 to $10 mark. It's the ones that got extremely low pressing numbers or are more obscure back catalog issues that are worth much more.
The thing is digital files or streaming is so much cheaper. You can get a digital album for around the same price you would pay for an album back in the 80's. When you account for inflation, that is such a bargain! $30 for a vinyl album is really not that bad when you consider inflation. But when you realize you could take the $30 and get 3 digital albums with it, you have to REALLY be dedicated to vinyl to keep buying everything on it.
That is all true! Which is what makes this genuine vinyl revival difficult for some to understand. Those who have not really had the full experience. True many of those people will never make the commitment but those who do, regardless of age, are all in. I have new young friends way into it. i visit them and it reminds me of my apartment in the '70s. A wall of records, a nice two channel audio system and the television is in another room. Their pleasure is sharing with friends in a social setting, playing records, going through the wall etc. And later, when they go onto their computer, there are no ads related to what they were listening to!
Albums did not cost $3.98 in 1966. In June 1967, the "Sgt. Pepper" album cost $1.77 mono, $2.39 stereo. I liked mono. Same with the Doors debut album. I still have the price stickers on the original purpose. As to what my point is, the answer is in Mr. Gioia's column. I believe the column to be about vinyl remaining a specialty purchase based on rarity, when better corporate planning might have made it more affordable. If you want to compare retail, you must compare the vinyl price of 1966 with the current CD price of a new album: the new Taylor Swift CD, beginning at $11.99 at Target.
BTW: I found a Goody's ad from July 26th 1969. $4.98 list was the lowest Schwann Catalog list price and those were on sale that week for $2.94, which in today's dollars is still $26.00. And yes, the fading CD market means prices dropping. It's always been less costly to press CDs on polycarbonate and package in a "jewel case" than it is to press a record and package in a nice paper on board laminated LP jacket. Even your $2.39 in 1968 is more than $18 in today's dollars.
I never argue with someone affiliated with the Absolute Sound, although I got along very well with Harry Pearson. It seems like you are spoiling for a fight, and you are moving the goalposts. 1966 to 1969. Prices change. So what? Find someone else to impress with your superior knowledge. I admit it: You're smarter than I am. You win.
This is correct. I recently researched prices of albums on vinyl and tape formats since the late 1950s. Mainstream retail album prices were $5.98 in the mid-1970s, which is about $35 today. At Sam Goody's they were cheaper, so $30 in today's dollars sounds about right.
Not totally sure this example tracks with time. In late 90’s there was a lot of vinyl available - led by dance / rnb / electronic music, but also most major releases had a vinyl edition. In UK at least these LPs were the same price as CDs, around £10-12.
What you claim about the late 90's simply is not true in America—and while I was able to get some U.K. vinyl back then it too wasn't "a lot of vinyl available". Vinyl releases were limited and pressing numbers were small. That's why records like Son Volt's "Wide Swing Tremolo" (1997) sells for upwards $150 in mint condition and Alice In Chains' debut album (1995) sells for upwards of $750 (median Discogs price is $389). Happy to own both but the point is, your claim that "lots of vinyl" was available from the majors is simply not supported by the facts in America. Plenty of dance/rb, yes and that helped save pressing plants. That and Scientologists for reasons I'll not get into here!
Sure, totally take all that. Limited sample of one (me) going by what was available then in Tower Recs / HMV / Virgin, central London. Obviously way more CDs, I guess my main point was on the cost. If you bought the new U2 , Madonna album on vinyl it was the same price as the CD. Totally accept the runs were small, there’d be v little back catalogue available.
Definitely have to hear what the Scientology angle is though! :)
I have zero nostalgia for vinyl, and I am quite happy with CDs. Less importantly, I like a crisp sound. More importantly, my recollection of vinyl was of surface noise, pops, clicks & skipping. I was not careless, because these things happened right out of the package, and always only on particular labels. Indie labels were the worst, my assumption being that they could only afford inexpensive pressings. Black Saint/Soul Note, Riverside, ESP, BYG Actuel - they were all terrible pressings. I kept returning them and trying again, but the replacements were no better. Soft Machine (the 1st) on ABC Probe was full of clicks and pops. I replaced it over and over (thank you, Sam Goody, for good customer service) and none of the new ones were any better. I didn't get a clean copy until a 2 LP set with that and their 2nd album came out in the UK. Verve must have had something against Gary McFarland, because all of his Verve albums had horrific surface noice. His later Impulse! albums did not. In fact, I never had an issue with Impulse!, or Atlantic, Blue Note, Reprise, or many others, leading me to believe that it was not my turntable or cartridge. I know that in the vinyl revival the pressings were made from better vinyl, but my frustration at being unable to get through, say, Charlie Byrd at the Gate, forever poisoned me against vinyl. I avoid streaming services since they do not pay their artists adequately, but I have no problem at all with CDs. I love CDs. I always will.
I like crisp potato chips. CDs were/are the worst format every introduced. The sound is sterile the packaging a joke the cost absurd. Streaming hi-res files demonstrates the awfulness of CDs. Vinyl outsold CDs last year both in dollar total and actual numbers. Good riddance to them.
I'm on-board with your assessment of CDs, I have around 500 of them. Your assessment of vinyl is accurate as well. In the early 80s I splurged on a linear tracking turntable; no chance of dropping the tone arm and having it skip and damage the LP. Yet the pops remained. I recorded every LP I bought (on cassette so I could listen in my car) and returned it to its jacket, just to keep it as pristine as possible. I still have about a third of my original LP collection (~125) that I couldn't find or afford to replace and listen to sporadically. I do find that the comments regarding the LP sound as "warm" are accurate, and when listening to the same album on CD it seems to me that the stereo effect is actually less than on the analog version. Discussing this with a friend who's experienced with the technical aspects of both types helped explain that: With standard digital recording on CDs there's a finite amount of numerical representation of sound that isn't limited with analog recording. I believe that, and damn the clicks and pops.
LPs don't sound "warm" unless the recording or associated gear is warm. You'd better not attend live classical music. The coughing, sneezing and choking are far worse than pops and clicks, of which 99% of my record have none .
I'm fortunate that we have some great secondhand vinyl stores nearby us even in rural Vermont. But, we also bought new records at deep discounts from independent record stores and big boxes alike, and built a very respectable vinyl collection in a hurry. My wife and I also inherited a sizeable classic rock vinyl collection from a family member for free. For us, vinyl is actually our favorite way of enjoying music, but for many people it's either a collection for investment or memoribilia's sake.
I don't think there's anything wrong with people without record players buying vinyl; after all, if you're going to collect any kind of music memorabilia, that's probably a solid buy as long as you don't overpay what many people were paying in 2021. We always sought below-market prices before we bought anything, and our collection has maintained its value according to discogs quite well.
I do entirely agree that this vinyl resurgence was terribly mishandled by the music industry, and the worst part of outsourcing is the poor quality control. Many new records are warped or otherwise damaged right out of the shrink wrap; again, this is why my wife and I have leaned towards used records or ones that were pressed long before the boom. I really do hope that someone comes along and gives vinyl and music lovers the selection and quality we deserve, but who knows if that's going to happen. I am hopeful that it does.
There is something more than a little weird when half the folks who buy vinyl don’t own a turntable. It forces music into the same category as Norman Rockwell collector plates (limited edition of course), Cabbage Patch Kids, and Barbie. In the absence of humans getting back on the road to evolution this will end only when all the basements, closets, and garages on Earth are filled. Maybe Musk or Bezos will invest in developing self-storage units on the Moon.
The main benefit of vinyl, imo, is that it was fairly expensive and we owned relatively few so we got to know those albums very well. That’s particularly important for aspiring musicians who could really get sounds ingrained in their souls. Then there was the artwork and the sleeve notes. And it was too much hassle to get up and change discs so we listened all the way through. As for the sound quality, I was glad to move over to CDs. If they sold the sleeves with codes for digital download I’d buy them (but not at current vinyl prices).
Nice article Ted. Yes, my confidence level is zero too. I’ve seen it all from the late 60’s forward. Eight track tapes, vinyl, cassettes, CD’s, Digital, etc. I also kept trading my record collections regardless of format over the decades. When the vinyl revolution (reinventing demand) occurred I had zero interest. I wasn’t going to reinvest in turntables, pricey vinyl, because I had longed moved on. In the early 70’s I would daily listen to full albums. It’s a rarity today. In addition everything has been repackaged a minimum of five times over. The only repackaging that I consider of “real” value were the Jethro Tull remasters by Steven Wilson in the multi CD 80 page booklets. Even if some industry wizard comes along with a vinyl “value” extreme makeover, I highly doubt I would get onboard. Cheers Ted!
A couple years ago my brother lived next to a record store in a gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago--white hipster/yuppie types driving out working class Latinx situation. My brother has a solid turntable setup and has accumulated a strong collection of LPs over a decade: new releases + used classics--he has some stuff like first pressings of the first Stooges album and Tago Mago. By no means a vinyl junkie, per se, but he has talked about taking out a supplemental insurance policy specifically on his records should something happen to his apartment. Exactly the sort of consumer who, if the music industry could cultivate many more like him, the industry would be thriving. He has a great relationship with the owner--he got his Amazon packages delivered there, kept an eye on the store occasionally, and got some hefty discounts on some Grateful Dead LPs because the shop owner knew he would spin and appreciate them like a real fan and not a more transactional type or like one of those people paying premium cash for a paper-and-plastic poster like you mention.
A little under 2 years ago one of my uncles passed away. He was a major CD and book collector--there were ~10,000 CDs in dozens of bankers' boxes and all that, from a lifetime of trips to Borders and ordering from boutique operations from the 80s onward. My brother and I inherited his collection. We asked the shop owner to come do an assessment, and he wound up taking possession of the majority of it all, consigning it to a speciality reseller and splitting the proceeds as those get cataloged and sold. (My brother and I had absolutely no interest in flipping it all ourselves and wanted to distribute it out as best as we could. We got a relatively modest payment for it and obviously first dibs on picking things we wanted.)
I'm not too into the details of the business side of things--I don't collect vinyl or have a turntable myself--but from what my brother has told me, apparently the proceeds being derived from selling those CDs, primarily to buyers in Japan and Eastern Europe, is what's keeping the record store afloat. The store is not the flashiest or biggest operation, but you could hardly ask for a better location/demographic for selling vinyl ... and it's a tangential side deal in CDs that is keeping the lights on.
As the shop owner has told my brother, 'I never imagined I would wind up in the luxury retail business.' It's truly appalling how badly the music industry as a whole has failed their best devotees and champions when anyone paying half attention to music trends knows how to fix things.
I'll add a follow-up re: people baffled that others are buying vinyl without owning a turntable. It's weird as a serious listener, yes, what's the point of paying a decent chunk or change for something you can't even use properly, but from the casual/fan perspective it makes sense. Vinyl remains the most clouted way to signal music fandom--a seriousness in this day and age that you like the artist so much that you bought something comparatively clunky and inefficient to listen to their music on compared to streaming them (even if you don't have a turntable to never spin the record on). An LP is significantly cooler than a CD. It being bigger is probably a big part of that.
Anyone can buy and wear a t-shirt, yes, but a lot of the times the design of them isn't attractive either in general or compared to the album art. I almost always check out the merch stand at the shows I go to, and vanishingly rarely do I see something I would want to buy and wear. And I wear t-shirts nearly every day when it's warm enough outside! It's lower stakes, in that sense, to awkwardly have the LP around instead of awkwardly having the shirt you never wear or don't have stuff you can style it with.
Few shows nowadays have show posters you can buy, or even copies of the promo flyer you can grab. In many ways, the LP is the paper-and-plastic poster you can get to display your fandom in your apartment or to the world at large.
The record store owner noted during his assessment that he'd always like to have a decent used copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors in his shop. Unspoken was the reasoning that it is the sort of 'Target-core' record someone popping into the shop as a novelty might buy on impulse. As big of a fan of Stevie Nicks as those people might be, I don't think many of those buyers are checking the condition of the album too closely before buying it.
what's depressing is wanting to be apart of this boom and not knowing where or how to start. i mean i could fund 10-15 separate repressings, but getting permission....yeah impossible for someone outside the music biz with no contacts. cuz there isn't a phone number to call and ask.
Sad to say, this is what happens when you don't invest in factory capacity. You are incapable of meeting demand, so you raise prices to slow it down. But you have now squandered all your chances at growth and mass market acceptance. The record industry will be forced to sell vinyl as if it's a Rolex watch. We'll see how many people decide to buy.
you have to caveat this conversation with, much of the big 3 are only repressing the multi platinum albums, n selling them affordablely . sure at some rate everything will get repressed, or sales will decline so fast they'll stop the repressings, and it all drys up, cept for the nostalgia aspect. as of Jan 2023, if economists continue to call for recession, maybe this year vinyl sales start the decline, because Adele won't save the vinyl industry on her next release.
musicians barely make money off repressings. somehow i have to believe, if the record company isn't manufacturing it directly, the musicians get screwed over. permission to produce and royalties I'm sure the lawyers found a way for the labels to pass along nothing.
In my opinion the whole vinyl resurgence was just another passing fad. For most people vinyl was desirable only because of the hype that is was cool in a vague sort of retro style sense. While vinyl has always had some die hard fans that believe it to be the superior sonic format the truth is that digital has significantly better potential dynamic range and in theory has infinite durability. Records collect dust, get scratched, get warped and eventually degrade just from the stylus dragging through the groove. The only advantage I see is the larger package provides a larger canvas for album art.
I think it was when I saw Toto IV going for $20 used that I knew we were reaching the end of this particular wave of tulipomania. A record that had sold in the millions and which was by no means rare.... Then I saw a reissue of Jon Anderson’s first solo LP for $40. Unhinged.
It was the price I considered unhinged, not the desire to own Olias of Sunhillow, which I wanted to buy. Fortunately, I found a first pressing in the same store for $8!
Spending money on R&D for vinyl, of all things, is practically oxymoronic. It's an obsolete technology that's achieved its inexplicable resurgence precisely *because* it's obsolete. In another sense, the "R&D" to improve on vinyl already happened, first with the CD and now with hi-res digital audio.
Great comment. The draw to vinyl is largely based on nostalgia. Digital streaming is an intangible thing. No moving parts, nothing to see, only sound. A record is physical. It has motion, the stylus chatters, the arm moves. You can understand how it works. When we were kids, all the jukeboxes had the record playing part totally visible. You could watch the mechanism move, grab the record and then play it. It was all "part of the show". I do a lot of vintage turntable restoration for customers, which is the only time I ever really play and listen to a record...just to make sure the repair is fully successful. Each time I'm reminded how inferior a format it is. The background noise is obvious, and even on the best setups, you can still perceive speed variation due to warp wow, poorly centered holes, and residual wow and flutter from the analog master tap. And yet, each time I get a real kick listening to music sounding as good as it does with a rock being dragged through a piece of plastic. There's just something about it that is a bit mesmerizing, and, well, fun. All that said, it's not sustainable. They have yet to come up with a solution for the loss of Apollo Masters a couple years back. That alone will put one heck of a kink in the ability to press new vinyl.
Very good point with the loss of the Apollo Masters. That was an absolute tragedy. One other thing on the general situation with vinyl being so difficult to produce these days: the PVC pellets used to make vinyl records are one more very vulnerable link in the supply chain. Something like more than half of the plastic used to make records in American plants comes from overseas (Thailand in particular), from companies that are notorious polluters, and whose factories can (and do) go down from time to time.
COVID didn't help at all either; the demand for plastics to make all kinds of other things besides vinyl records surged, further driving up prices for the raw materials, causing supply chain delays, etc.
If record companies really wanted to get their arms around the manufacturing piece of vinyl production, they would need to be founding new pressing plants all over the place as well as trying to bring back American PVC plastics manufacturing (much of which went away when the original vinyl market did back in the 90s). All in all, it's money I don't think the record industry either has or is willing to spend even if it did.
I say all this as someone who spent 2016-2020 working in a gigantic record store in Dallas, TX (Josey Records). The owners of the shop even bought an old local pressing operation (formerly known as A&R) and tried to get the old machines up & running. After a few years (during which they did press some really great records), they finally had to give it up when they realized to really get the plant fully operational, they'd have to get brand new parts custom-machined for all kinds of components, an expense that would have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I admired their tenacity for hanging onto the plant as long as they did, but in the end it just didn't make sense for them. On the plus side, the store itself has done great, and is now even bigger than when I left (literally millions of records in the Dallas store alone...it's nearly the size of a wal-mart).
Thank you for drawing some attention to the environmental issues behind producing vinyl. I have read repeatedly that the nurdles used to produce records are an awful source of pollution in many ways. One of the worst is that they frequently get lost at sea, swept overboard or the ship sinks, and we already have a mind-numbingly disgusting amount of microplastics on every beach in the world. Ultimately, I think it an environmental benefit that vinyl records not be a revived mass market item.
It wasn't some random supposition on my part: this has been reported on. Thai Plastic and Chemicals Public Company Limited (TPC) has been noted for this activity for quite some time now.
Did I write “notorious polluter”? I think not. Look, there can be a legitimate range of opinions about the environmental effects of vinyl, we can all have our own preferences as to audio source, and for sure there’s a lot of conflicting information out there - do you think the former Thai Plastics factory showed you their whole operation? Or just the bits they wanted you to see? - but to misquote what others say in a reply is plain, flat out lame - and damn rude. It completely undercuts any respect one may have for whatever else you have to say.
Let me assure you that there are those who find environmental issues with vinyl production, whatever vinyl’s aesthetic superiority which I grant on a genuine audiophile system with close listening - when it was an original analog recording, and to simply try and shout them down is not going to work. I am always fine with changing my mind when presented with new evidence. You haven’t presented any. It’s just another anecdote. All of us who’ve been around have dozens of them by now. I suspect with your cv that you have more than most. Happy to hear about your adventures but don’t mistake them for the whole story.
I was given a surprisingly complete factory tour though not allowed to video some because of trade secrets. However, it appeared to be a very modern and environmentally responsible operation that supplies PVC products worldwide. Has been in operation since 1945. There are new non petri-chemical materials being experimented with and used for record pressing that appear to be very promising.
it is not because of nostalgia. You don't know what you are talking about but you are funny! Digital streaming is great. But you have nothing and are left with nothing. Clearly your repairs are inferior.
Sure, Mikey, whatever you say. We all know you're vinyl's #1 cheerleader, so this is to be expected. As for my repairs, you know nothing about my background or my experience, nor do you know the quality of my work. So don't think you're talking with some yahoo with no background in this. As they say, opinions are like ***holes....Everybody's got one.
I'm fine with vinyl. With really good gear and careful setup it can sound great. I grew up with it and had very high end turntables and cartridges before moving away from it. As I got older, the finicky nature of the whole thing and the constant quest for the next best cartridge, arm, mat, preamp, etc. just became too much for me. Most of my work is on vintage stuff (older Thorens, Garrard 301, etc.) I wouldn't expect these to perform at the levels of the best contemporary stuff, and I can't say I've got a lot of experience with the newer high end gear.
yes, but for the greedy sobs we have, most record pressing machines are paid for many times over from decades ago. i mean back in 1970 any records pressed retail cost 5.99 -7.99?? so actually making it was at least half that. faster forward to today, outside the current costs of raw materials and operating costs, pressing the pvc is basically free. the pvc is sold buy the ton, and those bags/boxes of black pucks....those plants are making bank n pressing 24/7, so it's still cheap enough to flood the market. Bestbuy stopped selling CDs years ago, but they started to sell vinyl shortly after... I'm sure they aren't making a lot but they are there for sale. vinyl isn't going to stop anytime soon, but it will fall in sales. finally Europe never really stop pressing vinyl, and Asia may have been near zero but never destroyed the machines like the US basically did so vinyl will be around for awhile...n by that i mean til 2030 or longer
your comment is moronic. CD was a big step downward in sound quality. Though there were no pops and clicks. Few of my 16,000 records have pops are clicks but most sound better than any digital version.
None of your records sound better than a CD, you just think they do because you've grown to like the way they sound. Regardless, it's a moot point now. Digital audio is now at 24bit/96khz+, well beyond CD quality, so even if there were a legitimate debate as between CD and LP sound, hi-res digital leaves them both in the dust so decisively that there's not even any room for debate any longer - LP listeners just like the distortion and all the silly and unnecessary rituals attendant to it. I just hope they confine their ridiculous nostalgia to LPs and don't start spawning new crazes like going back to distributing software on floppy disks.
Vinyl. I held out all through my years in college and med school. CDs were almost 20 bucks a pop, places like Tower Records were clearing out their vinyl inventories. 3 for ten bucks. A friend would buy 2 CDs for 30, I'd walk out with 9 albums for the same price. B&O turntable with a needle that cost more than most folks' CD players, which weren't cheap back then.
Fast-forward ten years or so, I had probably a couple thousand vinyl records. But my new car had a CD player so I bought one for my apartment. Purchased CDs, now considerably cheaper, at the rate of ten a week. Load ten in the car and just skip certain songs, or zip from one album to the next. Same thing at home with the remote control. It was a mistake buying the one that held 300 CDs, couldn't remember which ones were where, and got lazy with swapping them. But the convenience! Especially since I was making astonishing progress figuring out lead guitar by playing along to my favorite tunes. Wanna replay a certain segment, just a couple buttons on the remote. Magic.
I laughed at the whole vinyl revival thing. All the expensive retro things are just fads. I never did go digital in the sense of downloading or streaming music. Still can't fathom the ridiculousness of listening to songs through tiny "speakers" in your ear, or through a dumbphone. (My speakers cost considerably more than my B&O needle . . . ). I know, the warm sound quality of vinyl and all that. I'm not sure I can discern much of a difference, and it's kind of moot if it's a new recording made in a digital studio where they're bending over backwards to make everything sound "perfect" anyways?
But there has to be a balance re the convenience. I never did find a CD player I could use while running. But you can't play vinyl say in your car.
The record companies, at least the big ones, are beholden to their investors demanding ROI. Only it's not just a decent ROI anymore, it's squeezing every last nickel and dime out of every damn turnip. Look what it's done to everything else in this country. The shock should be why anyone would expect anything different at this point. And while I haven't gone digital, another interesting aspect to ponder is where consumerism leads us all to. At least with digital you don't have the plastic packaging and wondering what happens in the landfills. Although there must be a digital landfill somehow somewhere.
I've been writing "deeply" about this subject since the 1970s so at some point when you read yet another nonsensical story ridiculing what is actually happening today, sometimes going "light" is sufficient. So let me ask you this: are there stories mocking book buyers? or calling them hipsters or fadsters or claiming people buy books to fill shelves? No. I know this subject.
There's one big reason to buy vinyl that no one is mentioning: the artwork and the liner notes (ok 2 reasons). The large format of a 12" beats hell out of 4 inch square CD. And liner notes in a 5 point font squeezed into a CD booklet, well, somehow it lacks the gravitas of the tomes inscribed on the backsides of the old Blue Note pressings I started collecting in 1973.
Does the attraction for memorizing arcane details of the recording session and zoning out on the cover art disappear when you haven't just smoked the herb that you just cleaned on top of said cover art?
Say it ain't so. Or is it just that we're not sixteen anymore?
Next power outage I'm gonna hook up my amp and turntable to my Sears Die Hard battery to make sure I can continue to dig my vinyl when the grid goes down for good. The way the world's going, I would expect no less.
I have both a turntable (to be honest, three) and a CD player. I don't consider myself an audiophile; I just prefer playing records. In the last ten years I've traded a few thousand CDs for a couple hundred used LPs, and have been trading out records as well. I prefer records for a reason I haven't seen mentioned in these comments (though perhaps I missed it): 20-25 minutes of purposely sequenced music.
One comment spoke disparagingly of needing to get up every twenty minutes to change the record. For me, that's the point, and in a different way, it's another reason I don't see "new" vinyl records taking off. I've been disappointed, naively, to realize that the new records I purchase are just a CD's worth of music pressed onto vinyl, often a two-LP set with Side D blank.
I tired of CDs because I rarely want to hear 65-70 minutes of one artist at a time. And that generous time allotment leads some artists to insert filler material.
When creative artists were THINKING in LP mode, they sequenced a record side in the same way they sequenced a live set, just shorter. You pick an opener and a closer for each side, then create a flow with the inner tracks. Not everyone was as good at it, or as careful, but that's the LP attraction for me--a good "side" of music, then I get up, pick another record (usually already have that in mind) and put an another.
You really hit on something I read a while back about the changing ways that music is made in general. No longer do you see long drawn out instrumentals to begin a song. In the “swipe left” generation if the artist hasn’t givin’ you the meat in first 10 seconds they’re done. Also the fact that you don’t even need an album to achieve any type of fame in music these days. Just cover a popular song with some twist and you’re an “artist”. An LP used to be a concept. That’s gone.
I refuse to use streaming services because they rip off artists. So i buy physical media where possible or pay over suggested price for downloads from co-op sites like Bandcamp.
The music industry is utterly, dysfunctionally FUBB.
Yes, the scene is FUBAR. Not even fit to be called an industry. We indie musicians deeply appreciate knowledgeable fans like you who use Bandcamp. I keep my primary store there and it's artist-friendly for sure. Soundcloud also seems to be a decent place to build up fans and revenue. All the major services, Spotify, Apple, etc...are close to meaningless from the perspective of creators, in terms of both money and marketing reach.
Yes!! Bandcamp is great for fans and bands ❤️
I love Bandcamp and put my music there first. I dislike Spotify intensely but it's kind of the devil you know. Tidal and Apple Music are somewhat better. However, *some* artists are having success building a public on streaming services, by investing in their own promotion.
Boy I have a lot to say here, but I’ll keep it short. Yes the majors don’t want to be in manufacturing. Yes the majors only care about streaming. But people who buy records and don’t have turntables are basically buying a tshirt. That is not a record buyer. Vinyl is a luxury object, so are many turntables and home stereos at this point. There are people who want lps but the fact is, and I’ve said it before, 60 million people pay to stream in the US. Such a minuscule comparative amount buy vinyl. It’s no longer, and never will be again, the premier music format. It’s there if you want, like making your own pickles, or learning how to butcher, it’s a way to connect to a different time and a different sound. Most people, including those who buy records without turntables, don’t really care. There’s no need to -woe is me- vinyl. It’s doing what it supposed to do, which is allow those types of people who want to listen to records, learn who the artist and producer is, and after 20 minutes get up and put on another one. The phone does that without all the work. The past way we used vinyl won’t repeat, why would it.
a $3.98 record in 1966 would cost $30+ today. This article is written by someone who hasn't a clue
Michael, You're such a buzzkill. The man has written a lot of great books on jazz. You haven't written one.
Someone who knows!
No one suggests vinyl will ever be the primary means for music consumption. Nor will gourmet dining be how most people eat. People who wish to eat at Chipotle's and think its fine dining are welcome to it. People who wish to use their phones to listen to music and think it's a swell experience are welcome to that. People who mock those who understand the pleasures of vinyl will always get a hard time from me and have for decades. I'm through being nice but now that I'm winning this war I see the other side is getting bitter and I find it funny.
🤨
Thank you for saving me the trouble of writing what would have been essentially the same thing. I teach data analysis in the music industry at NYU; this is more or less what I've been telling my students.
Vinyl is merch. You can hang it on your wall. The fact that 50% of vinyl buyers don't own turntables should have been Clue #1. I know a few people who swear by the sound and experience of playing vinyl (I like it myself!), but they are in a tiny minority.
I'm glad I'm not your student.
Michael, go away. You're starting to be a troll.
Wow, as someone who has been buying records for 15 odd years at this point, this couldn't be more wrong. It might be merch for part of the market, but there is a massive and very dedicated market for people who buy to listen. And I'd wager that if you really do have knowledge of data analysis in the music industry it would show you that the people who own turntables and buy to listen buy many times more records per person than those who buy one copy of Taylor Swift as a souvenir.
Yale, you definitely know from which you speak. You are responsible for putting out some fantastic music, some of which was pressed at Europadisk back in the day. I worked there from ‘87-‘89 and then again for some years in the 90s. The formats change but it’s the music that’s the thing. Rock on!
"Mother's are crying...
Oh, Lord! Hold close our children's souls...
They gonna be comin' home to you
SO Long before they get old"
c. 1969
Look that up on you phone.
youtube pulled up Pitbull when i searched. it certainly isn't Motley Crue. Bubbasparxx i give up who is it?
That's so beautiful and sad. I remember those terrible times and so much beautiful music. No luck with my phone. I'll ask. Whose words? Whose music?
Maybe they buy vinyl records for the same reason they buy tee shirts. They like the music those albums and shirts represent.
I think the big question here is whether they merely like or actually know the music represented by those albums and T-shirts. Elsewhere there was a reference to “nonsensical hipster status signaling object(s)” which I think is a legitimate issue to raise. Not that I have a firm opinion either way. I don’t know enough youngish people.
Many angry people not enjoying their digits. Many happy people enjoying their vinyl.
young people are clueless IMHO. They are smart but yet not. maybe because I'm getting old, but they way the talk, and communicate...the way the speak...ugh. maybe i was that way 30yrs ago, but when it comes to music...kids today are truly unfortunate but yet fortunate. unfortunate because today's music is pure garbage. the music industry is pushing non musicians, and unoriginal art = 100% Gar....Baaaage! now fortunately, look at all of what kids can listen to today! some much original made, written, produced, and played (ie actual instruments not computers) there will never be another: GnR, Beatles, Queen, Ozzy, Motley, U2, Stones, i can go on.... The music today is manufactured at least in the USA. Europe seems to create music made by musicians. The US is all about whoring out who they own, not what's good. Country, Pop music and Rap n B. Rock in the US is no longer "in" no longer whored...which if you think about it the 80's debauchery was whored out and whores brought in to sell it. Then grunge happened. Few bands from that era wear great. but as a whole grunge was a bad dream. but again young people have that....all of the best music ever made, was made. getting out to everyone is cheap. i mean youtube has basically everything #free. young peoples music priorities are small scale. they are TikTok n Onlyfans, they are how many clicks can i get. music is background noise to them. and for those buying vinyl, the 12x12 in square with circle medium inside is that tangible "look what i have" conversation piece. kids growing up today aren't surrounded by music like in decades past, unless their parents introduce them to it. i feel bad for young people. we live in a over self-centered world and the young people today are just so caught up in it, but they don't have to miss out on greatness. it's out there they just have to click n listen.
Forgive me, I’m not attacking you, bc I like the bands you named here but this comment is full of conjecture and tired rockism and honestly super self-centered around your personal tastes. Your taste in music is still just your taste in music. That part will always be subjective.
More to the point, those bands you named are all from one single genre, rock, and each of those bands specifically have made TONS of bland forgettable, corporate music-product in their day, and they used live musicians to do it. Also they are all just bands you like. That’s it. I mean, when Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required came out I was only 10 but I still didn’t understand how anyone could like it, bc it sounded like a TV commercial to me (and it still does). People were saying similar things when “Sugar Sugar” was ripping up the charts. A tale as old as, well, rock.
I’m in my mid-40’s so maybe my proximity to young people is different but man, there is so much good music being made today (Ted will tell you!), it’s just not anything like 80’s rock” and boy am I grateful for that. We may live in a more atomized culture nowadays and so the most profitable and popular music may not be your favorite but the music is still being made. It just takes a little digging. Promise.
“Rockism” - one of my favourite words! It was exactly what those of us out on the front line fringes (can you be on a front line fringe?) in the mid ‘80s were fighting against. Mixed success at best I fear ‘cos obviously rockism lives on. Perhaps more of a zombie stagger now eating the eardrums of the easily impressionable.
There is a funny excersise you can do: Search for popular songs of any decade on youtube and read the comment section. For songs from the 50s till the 2010s you can find comments like the one here: Clearly, the music of THIS specific decade (which coincidentally was the era of the commenters 20s) was the best in music. After that: "Gar...Baaage!"
i do. and it's hard to talk with them. in fact i was in a record store recently and the workers in there, 1 guy in his mid/late 60's and 2 younger girls 20-23 my guess (they talked about alcohol hence my age guess) anyway thumbing through the bins, and hearing these three having a conversation was just painful. younger peoples thought processing and sentence construction is amiss. again maybe my perception is off, but hearing the hollowness in what they were saying and how they responded to the elder worker....was enough for me to leave. maybe it was them, but i felt like i was literally in room surrounded by actual bimbos. i know it's not everyone who's like this buuuut.... it's not the first time, sooo...1 bad apple spoiled the whole dam bunch..? or one older person having difficulty communicating with n listening to 3 Generations of humans born after me...you decide (I'm sure i know what way yer leaning, n that's ok)
That is not an issue to raise at all. People who buy t-shirts of bands they don’t really listen to aren’t any kind of problem. At worst, they’re signaling that they want to be associated with the band’s style--and it almost never means they *don’t like* the artist. It’s just fashion! Applying a litmus test to everyone who wears a band tee or an album on whether they *really* like them, *that* is a problem. Music is for the people, not just for audiophiles or fanatics. It’s just pointless gate keeping that does nothing for music.
Thank you for your invitation. I have considered it and have more to say. Firstly, if you read what I said I was not “casually insulting a generation.” I was asking a question, pointing to comments made elsewhere, and admitting that I did not know the answers. If anyone is doing any casual insulting it is you by misrepresenting my remark.
However, now we’re here, I’ll add that I am of the general opinion that buying vinyl when one doesn’t even own a turntable is weird. Further, I recognize that there are some big brand names of classic rock that receive mass adulation and who manage to sell vinyl as T-shirts. I do not have to praise those who buy such things. I think they’re consumerist lemmings. There was a trend some time ago for youngish people to wear tour T-shirts from classic rock bands on tour long before they were born. These I would say is ersatz to a ridiculous degree. I think the idea of representing your cultural affiliation to long ago musical expressions that were frankly dubious even in their time is an indication of superficial understanding at best.
If this describes your children, too bad. Not my problem.
Just my personal opinions. There is obviously room for many other opinions. I don’t expect many to share mine because, if that were the case, classic rock would be well and truly buried and not doing the zombie stagger it is currently doing through the sale of replicant LPs.
"...I’ll add that I am of the general opinion that buying vinyl when one doesn’t even own a turntable is weird."
I totally agree with that and the rest of your commentary. Keeping my Technics linear tracking turntable and top of the line Pioneer (from when Pioneer was actually top of the line) in good working order is difficult, to say the least. I also have my Journey "Escape" concert T, not to mention a few Buffett Ts and can still fit into them with no problem. I also recognize that I'm simply old and don't particularly like current technology, having stopped with CDs. Easy doesn't make anything sound better.
I doubt even Buffett can fit into his Ts any longer. Looks like he’s going on the road in March. Chance for more merch!
A Technics linear tracking turntable is an interesting component to have. Must be quite rare. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one and had forgotten they existed. I can understand why they’re difficult to keep in working order. Some technologies are more elegant and rugged than others. I have a pair of SL1200s from the early ‘80s and I’m hoping they out live me. So far, so good. They are near bomb proof. I do baby them a bit. Finally bought road cases for them, but they’ve just sat in my studio for years now.
Did I say “that the music that young people care about isn’t music and then to go on to characterize their enjoyment of music as some kind of empty status signifier”? No, I didn’t. Another comment from another person. Perhaps you have been enjoying too many “canned dog food and banana sandwiches” with their well known psychotropic qualities yourself to understand the words before you on a screen and who is responsible for them. It’s difficult, I know. You have to actually follow a conversation. As it is, you repeatedly misrepresent what I write which makes me wonder just how many bricks shy of a full load you are.
Further, the idea that “all of recorded music is laid out like a buffet” is rubbish. Common, it’s true - I’ve read it again and again for literally decades by various digital propagandists - but it’s the sort of ignorant comment made by people who have no idea of what they’re talking about when it comes to the vast panoply of recorded music. There is undoubtedly a significant selection readily available, but “like a buffet”? And “all of recorded music”? You simply don’t know, do you?
Retromania is Petromania. 😂 my sides. Some of you who tote around I-phones so you can stream anywhere there’s wifi, should look at how lithium and other precious metals are mined. And your worried about the environmental impact of vinyl records. It’s such a petty argument. Like straw grasping petty.
We also want to keep in mind the environmental impact of streaming.
https://blog.constellation.com/2020/05/15/energy-consumption-of-streaming-services/
Comparative analysis, anyone?
Good quote there from Kyle Devine.
I guess you don't fly much.
God, no! Hardly ever. Not for years. Haven’t crossed the Atlantic since 2002. Maybe four flights to California from Washington in the same twenty years. Hate the experience for one and I’m pretty hardcore environmentalist by most people’s standards. Deliberately childless, drive less than fifty miles a week, heat pumps, solar panels, etc. etc. Probably your worst nightmare. Buy quite a few CDs, also your nightmare if I’ve read you correctly, plus even some vinyl, so I’m not a completely lost case.
I worked at a NYC audiophile record pressing plant, Europadisk, in the late 80s and 90s. We created the highest quality records, had in house Direct Metal Mastering (where the state of the art ended), in house electro plating and several machines pressing the highest quality German Teldec vinyl (ie, quietest - less tics and pops, good bass frequencies). What I know for sure is that making this quality vinyl record was as much an art as it was a manufacturing process, with a wide variety of potential costly problems to deal with on a daily basis - inconsistent vinyl pellets, delays and volatile imported vinyl costs, minute issues with plated production parts (stampers), issues with steam generation which the pressing machines rely on, broken machine parts which were difficult to obtain back in the day and probably more so now, and on and on. I think we’re way too far down the digital road to ever realistically get back to a profitable place with vinyl when digital is cheaper, and yes in many cases sounds better (cue the squeals of dismay). Also, vinyl is a petroleum product, and how could it ever make sense to dig in deep with this technology again when it seems the goal in todays world is to eradicate anything having to do with it?
I loved my vinyl records for as long as that made sense. Still have them. Don’t play them. The musician/artist side of me wishes there was still a decent market in which to sell physical product. But I live in the world as it is now and deal with the positive and negative as best I can.
I love your essays, and this one was 100% correct, but only fails to take into account the world (for better or worse) as we find it regarding the economy and the ever falling value our world places on music.
All very good points, especially the part about vinyl production being as much an art as a manufacturing process. Finding people who understand how to cut a good lacquer and do the electro-plating process and all the other extremely complicated things that aren't just a matter of pushing a button is really hard these days. Most of the ones who are really good at it are getting on in years, and it's not something you really can teach someone in a short period, especially at the higher skill levels.
Hey Russ!
“… digital is cheaper, and yes in many cases sounds better (cue the squeals of dismay)”
Oh man, you went there! I’ve long thought the absolute claims of “vinyl sounds better“ were dubious at best, and often just wrong.
I’m coming at this as a fan of vinyl. I love the act of interacting with a physical medium, and spent many hours of my youth listening to records while reading the album covers and looking at the pictures (often so many times, those images are burned into my memories).
Of course, I’ve heard some awesome pressings, and had wonderful experiences of listening to vinyl.
But yeah, there are times when a high quality recording, mixed and mastered by thoughtful artists of the time/genre, delivered digitally is the superior experience.
I have not expressed this amongst my group of friends because I know there’s a giant argument looming if I do.
I remain a fan of the format, but I don’t agree that it is automatically a better listening experience.
Then you know that a $3.98 record in 1966 would cost around $30 today and the claim that records today are overpriced is absurd on its face along with the rest of this story written by someone who is clueless..
Mmm...I don't know that this is strictly true. In that era of vinyl there were *millions* of records being produced from plants all over the world, and thus each unit was vastly cheaper to make & distribute. In this era, even a pressing run of 10,000 is considered huge (think Taylor Swift level artists). Economies of scale make a huge difference in production cost. Doing a pressing run that's more in the range of most independent artists (i.e. between 100-1000 copies) means each copy is far more expensive to make, and the profit margin for the artist/label that much smaller.
Your numbers are way off! One major plant in 2013 pressed 26 million records alone. I'm looking at a confidential industry spread sheet I was sent for that year. It's gotten much bigger a decade later. 10,000 is not "huge". Taylor Swift sold 1.7 MILLION records in 2022 across her catalog. Harry Styles sold 719,000. 10,000+ is what most Tone Poet $40 Blue Note jazz reissues sell! They sell out and need to be re-pressed.
Are you honestly saying that the number of records being pressed today has *any* comparison to the number of records being pressed in 1966? Or in any of the peak years of vinyl as a format? It's a mere shadow of the size the industry used to be.
The vast number of artists I see pressing records have runs of 100-1000 records, most between 100-500. I worked at the largest record store in TX (Josey Records) between 2016-2020. Every time we'd get in some new random Taylor Swift record, the numeration on the back was typically "__/10,000", which seemed the standard pressing run for any given variant of her albums. If you're not talking about mega-popular artists like her, or eternal mainstays like The Beatles, the simple fact is that pressing runs are quite small, and profit margins are too.
The cost of getting the metal stampers, electroplating, proper lacquers, possibly having to do multiple test-press runs to get the sound right, etc etc are all fixed costs. If you can't afford to do a huge pressing run, you're stuck having to charge more for each record just to break even, much less make a profit.
I never said anything like that. Not sure from where you got that. The "special edition" numbered Swifts might be "of 10,000" but she sold 1.7 million records in 2022 and that's the ones that were counted. The numbers are far higher. Yes, the smaller artists who go on the road and sell their records at tables press fewer numbers but I'm glad they make them and sell them. I'm well aware of the process. I've been covering it for decades. Small runs are costly.
One of my daughters is into vinyl, so I bought her a turntable and bluetooth speaker set up she enjoys. But it took many weeks, maybe months, to get those Beyonce and Taylor Swift LPs she ordered. A rebrand of the old East Coast (Boston area) record store Newbury Comics has a busy Long Island mall store with manga, K-pop merch, and new vinyl, but even my daughter thought it wasn't worth it for me to buy her the new Lana Del Rey album or whatever for $30-$40. And $30 appears to be ground level for most new vinyl.
And I used to think $14.99 was outrageous for a vinyl. I worked at Peaches Records and Tapes in the late 70’s early 80’s. I have several “peach” crates full of oldies but goodies. Guess they’re worth something after all.
Interesting essay.
I recall when you could buy a lot of the records that you see at newbury comics now for $5 to $10 on clearance, only even on sale just to get them out of the backroom. Kudos to those who either held onto them or knew that a vinyl resurgence was due sooner or later! Yes, it's very likely a lot of those records have significant value, although because of the resurgence, the market is flooded with a lot of the most popular records, so many of the ones you might think are big money are actually around that $5 to $10 mark. It's the ones that got extremely low pressing numbers or are more obscure back catalog issues that are worth much more.
Many of them are autographed. Working at a record store got you promos, backstage passes, etc. It’s fun to know old is new again!
Newbury comics i will credit for not over charging used vinyl. as for new, they make margin
a $3.98 record in 1966 would cost $30 today. "Guess they're worth something after all"? Check out prices on Discogs.
Yes inflation alone would make a $4 album in 1973 a $28 album in 2023.
That is true!
The thing is digital files or streaming is so much cheaper. You can get a digital album for around the same price you would pay for an album back in the 80's. When you account for inflation, that is such a bargain! $30 for a vinyl album is really not that bad when you consider inflation. But when you realize you could take the $30 and get 3 digital albums with it, you have to REALLY be dedicated to vinyl to keep buying everything on it.
That is all true! Which is what makes this genuine vinyl revival difficult for some to understand. Those who have not really had the full experience. True many of those people will never make the commitment but those who do, regardless of age, are all in. I have new young friends way into it. i visit them and it reminds me of my apartment in the '70s. A wall of records, a nice two channel audio system and the television is in another room. Their pleasure is sharing with friends in a social setting, playing records, going through the wall etc. And later, when they go onto their computer, there are no ads related to what they were listening to!
$30 today is $3.98 in 1966 dollars, which is what records then cost. So, your point is?
Albums did not cost $3.98 in 1966. In June 1967, the "Sgt. Pepper" album cost $1.77 mono, $2.39 stereo. I liked mono. Same with the Doors debut album. I still have the price stickers on the original purpose. As to what my point is, the answer is in Mr. Gioia's column. I believe the column to be about vinyl remaining a specialty purchase based on rarity, when better corporate planning might have made it more affordable. If you want to compare retail, you must compare the vinyl price of 1966 with the current CD price of a new album: the new Taylor Swift CD, beginning at $11.99 at Target.
BTW: I found a Goody's ad from July 26th 1969. $4.98 list was the lowest Schwann Catalog list price and those were on sale that week for $2.94, which in today's dollars is still $26.00. And yes, the fading CD market means prices dropping. It's always been less costly to press CDs on polycarbonate and package in a "jewel case" than it is to press a record and package in a nice paper on board laminated LP jacket. Even your $2.39 in 1968 is more than $18 in today's dollars.
I never argue with someone affiliated with the Absolute Sound, although I got along very well with Harry Pearson. It seems like you are spoiling for a fight, and you are moving the goalposts. 1966 to 1969. Prices change. So what? Find someone else to impress with your superior knowledge. I admit it: You're smarter than I am. You win.
This is correct. I recently researched prices of albums on vinyl and tape formats since the late 1950s. Mainstream retail album prices were $5.98 in the mid-1970s, which is about $35 today. At Sam Goody's they were cheaper, so $30 in today's dollars sounds about right.
Not totally sure this example tracks with time. In late 90’s there was a lot of vinyl available - led by dance / rnb / electronic music, but also most major releases had a vinyl edition. In UK at least these LPs were the same price as CDs, around £10-12.
What you claim about the late 90's simply is not true in America—and while I was able to get some U.K. vinyl back then it too wasn't "a lot of vinyl available". Vinyl releases were limited and pressing numbers were small. That's why records like Son Volt's "Wide Swing Tremolo" (1997) sells for upwards $150 in mint condition and Alice In Chains' debut album (1995) sells for upwards of $750 (median Discogs price is $389). Happy to own both but the point is, your claim that "lots of vinyl" was available from the majors is simply not supported by the facts in America. Plenty of dance/rb, yes and that helped save pressing plants. That and Scientologists for reasons I'll not get into here!
Sure, totally take all that. Limited sample of one (me) going by what was available then in Tower Recs / HMV / Virgin, central London. Obviously way more CDs, I guess my main point was on the cost. If you bought the new U2 , Madonna album on vinyl it was the same price as the CD. Totally accept the runs were small, there’d be v little back catalogue available.
Definitely have to hear what the Scientology angle is though! :)
But considering minimum wage was maybe $4.00, to a 17 year old, working hourly on weekends, $14.99 was a lot of money.
I have zero nostalgia for vinyl, and I am quite happy with CDs. Less importantly, I like a crisp sound. More importantly, my recollection of vinyl was of surface noise, pops, clicks & skipping. I was not careless, because these things happened right out of the package, and always only on particular labels. Indie labels were the worst, my assumption being that they could only afford inexpensive pressings. Black Saint/Soul Note, Riverside, ESP, BYG Actuel - they were all terrible pressings. I kept returning them and trying again, but the replacements were no better. Soft Machine (the 1st) on ABC Probe was full of clicks and pops. I replaced it over and over (thank you, Sam Goody, for good customer service) and none of the new ones were any better. I didn't get a clean copy until a 2 LP set with that and their 2nd album came out in the UK. Verve must have had something against Gary McFarland, because all of his Verve albums had horrific surface noice. His later Impulse! albums did not. In fact, I never had an issue with Impulse!, or Atlantic, Blue Note, Reprise, or many others, leading me to believe that it was not my turntable or cartridge. I know that in the vinyl revival the pressings were made from better vinyl, but my frustration at being unable to get through, say, Charlie Byrd at the Gate, forever poisoned me against vinyl. I avoid streaming services since they do not pay their artists adequately, but I have no problem at all with CDs. I love CDs. I always will.
I like crisp potato chips. CDs were/are the worst format every introduced. The sound is sterile the packaging a joke the cost absurd. Streaming hi-res files demonstrates the awfulness of CDs. Vinyl outsold CDs last year both in dollar total and actual numbers. Good riddance to them.
I'm on-board with your assessment of CDs, I have around 500 of them. Your assessment of vinyl is accurate as well. In the early 80s I splurged on a linear tracking turntable; no chance of dropping the tone arm and having it skip and damage the LP. Yet the pops remained. I recorded every LP I bought (on cassette so I could listen in my car) and returned it to its jacket, just to keep it as pristine as possible. I still have about a third of my original LP collection (~125) that I couldn't find or afford to replace and listen to sporadically. I do find that the comments regarding the LP sound as "warm" are accurate, and when listening to the same album on CD it seems to me that the stereo effect is actually less than on the analog version. Discussing this with a friend who's experienced with the technical aspects of both types helped explain that: With standard digital recording on CDs there's a finite amount of numerical representation of sound that isn't limited with analog recording. I believe that, and damn the clicks and pops.
LPs don't sound "warm" unless the recording or associated gear is warm. You'd better not attend live classical music. The coughing, sneezing and choking are far worse than pops and clicks, of which 99% of my record have none .
I'm fortunate that we have some great secondhand vinyl stores nearby us even in rural Vermont. But, we also bought new records at deep discounts from independent record stores and big boxes alike, and built a very respectable vinyl collection in a hurry. My wife and I also inherited a sizeable classic rock vinyl collection from a family member for free. For us, vinyl is actually our favorite way of enjoying music, but for many people it's either a collection for investment or memoribilia's sake.
I don't think there's anything wrong with people without record players buying vinyl; after all, if you're going to collect any kind of music memorabilia, that's probably a solid buy as long as you don't overpay what many people were paying in 2021. We always sought below-market prices before we bought anything, and our collection has maintained its value according to discogs quite well.
I do entirely agree that this vinyl resurgence was terribly mishandled by the music industry, and the worst part of outsourcing is the poor quality control. Many new records are warped or otherwise damaged right out of the shrink wrap; again, this is why my wife and I have leaned towards used records or ones that were pressed long before the boom. I really do hope that someone comes along and gives vinyl and music lovers the selection and quality we deserve, but who knows if that's going to happen. I am hopeful that it does.
There is something more than a little weird when half the folks who buy vinyl don’t own a turntable. It forces music into the same category as Norman Rockwell collector plates (limited edition of course), Cabbage Patch Kids, and Barbie. In the absence of humans getting back on the road to evolution this will end only when all the basements, closets, and garages on Earth are filled. Maybe Musk or Bezos will invest in developing self-storage units on the Moon.
At least you don’t have to dust NFTs or keep them out of direct sunlight. 🥸
The main benefit of vinyl, imo, is that it was fairly expensive and we owned relatively few so we got to know those albums very well. That’s particularly important for aspiring musicians who could really get sounds ingrained in their souls. Then there was the artwork and the sleeve notes. And it was too much hassle to get up and change discs so we listened all the way through. As for the sound quality, I was glad to move over to CDs. If they sold the sleeves with codes for digital download I’d buy them (but not at current vinyl prices).
NFTs have their own problems. Personally prefer physical, but maybe I'm just old...
Nice article Ted. Yes, my confidence level is zero too. I’ve seen it all from the late 60’s forward. Eight track tapes, vinyl, cassettes, CD’s, Digital, etc. I also kept trading my record collections regardless of format over the decades. When the vinyl revolution (reinventing demand) occurred I had zero interest. I wasn’t going to reinvest in turntables, pricey vinyl, because I had longed moved on. In the early 70’s I would daily listen to full albums. It’s a rarity today. In addition everything has been repackaged a minimum of five times over. The only repackaging that I consider of “real” value were the Jethro Tull remasters by Steven Wilson in the multi CD 80 page booklets. Even if some industry wizard comes along with a vinyl “value” extreme makeover, I highly doubt I would get onboard. Cheers Ted!
A couple years ago my brother lived next to a record store in a gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago--white hipster/yuppie types driving out working class Latinx situation. My brother has a solid turntable setup and has accumulated a strong collection of LPs over a decade: new releases + used classics--he has some stuff like first pressings of the first Stooges album and Tago Mago. By no means a vinyl junkie, per se, but he has talked about taking out a supplemental insurance policy specifically on his records should something happen to his apartment. Exactly the sort of consumer who, if the music industry could cultivate many more like him, the industry would be thriving. He has a great relationship with the owner--he got his Amazon packages delivered there, kept an eye on the store occasionally, and got some hefty discounts on some Grateful Dead LPs because the shop owner knew he would spin and appreciate them like a real fan and not a more transactional type or like one of those people paying premium cash for a paper-and-plastic poster like you mention.
A little under 2 years ago one of my uncles passed away. He was a major CD and book collector--there were ~10,000 CDs in dozens of bankers' boxes and all that, from a lifetime of trips to Borders and ordering from boutique operations from the 80s onward. My brother and I inherited his collection. We asked the shop owner to come do an assessment, and he wound up taking possession of the majority of it all, consigning it to a speciality reseller and splitting the proceeds as those get cataloged and sold. (My brother and I had absolutely no interest in flipping it all ourselves and wanted to distribute it out as best as we could. We got a relatively modest payment for it and obviously first dibs on picking things we wanted.)
I'm not too into the details of the business side of things--I don't collect vinyl or have a turntable myself--but from what my brother has told me, apparently the proceeds being derived from selling those CDs, primarily to buyers in Japan and Eastern Europe, is what's keeping the record store afloat. The store is not the flashiest or biggest operation, but you could hardly ask for a better location/demographic for selling vinyl ... and it's a tangential side deal in CDs that is keeping the lights on.
As the shop owner has told my brother, 'I never imagined I would wind up in the luxury retail business.' It's truly appalling how badly the music industry as a whole has failed their best devotees and champions when anyone paying half attention to music trends knows how to fix things.
I'll add a follow-up re: people baffled that others are buying vinyl without owning a turntable. It's weird as a serious listener, yes, what's the point of paying a decent chunk or change for something you can't even use properly, but from the casual/fan perspective it makes sense. Vinyl remains the most clouted way to signal music fandom--a seriousness in this day and age that you like the artist so much that you bought something comparatively clunky and inefficient to listen to their music on compared to streaming them (even if you don't have a turntable to never spin the record on). An LP is significantly cooler than a CD. It being bigger is probably a big part of that.
Anyone can buy and wear a t-shirt, yes, but a lot of the times the design of them isn't attractive either in general or compared to the album art. I almost always check out the merch stand at the shows I go to, and vanishingly rarely do I see something I would want to buy and wear. And I wear t-shirts nearly every day when it's warm enough outside! It's lower stakes, in that sense, to awkwardly have the LP around instead of awkwardly having the shirt you never wear or don't have stuff you can style it with.
Few shows nowadays have show posters you can buy, or even copies of the promo flyer you can grab. In many ways, the LP is the paper-and-plastic poster you can get to display your fandom in your apartment or to the world at large.
The record store owner noted during his assessment that he'd always like to have a decent used copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors in his shop. Unspoken was the reasoning that it is the sort of 'Target-core' record someone popping into the shop as a novelty might buy on impulse. As big of a fan of Stevie Nicks as those people might be, I don't think many of those buyers are checking the condition of the album too closely before buying it.
Very likely all true, and forgive me, I find it rather depressing.
what's depressing is wanting to be apart of this boom and not knowing where or how to start. i mean i could fund 10-15 separate repressings, but getting permission....yeah impossible for someone outside the music biz with no contacts. cuz there isn't a phone number to call and ask.
According to this story, prices for new vinyl are about to go up even higher (hard to believe that would even be possible!): https://www.google.com/amp/s/torontosun.com/entertainment/music/blood-from-stone-huge-price-increases-coming-for-vinyl-albums/wcm/27cc1d0b-ac38-4fa8-91e8-0c98fa9d4a10/amp/. The price notwithstanding, the fact is used vinyl often sounds better than new pressings and relatively inexpensive. Great for the listener but another hit for musicians who, as correctly noted, don't make a dime off of used sales.
Sad to say, this is what happens when you don't invest in factory capacity. You are incapable of meeting demand, so you raise prices to slow it down. But you have now squandered all your chances at growth and mass market acceptance. The record industry will be forced to sell vinyl as if it's a Rolex watch. We'll see how many people decide to buy.
I suspect less and less - the vinyl revival will be sustained, I'm fairly sure, by the thriving used market.
you have to caveat this conversation with, much of the big 3 are only repressing the multi platinum albums, n selling them affordablely . sure at some rate everything will get repressed, or sales will decline so fast they'll stop the repressings, and it all drys up, cept for the nostalgia aspect. as of Jan 2023, if economists continue to call for recession, maybe this year vinyl sales start the decline, because Adele won't save the vinyl industry on her next release.
musicians barely make money off repressings. somehow i have to believe, if the record company isn't manufacturing it directly, the musicians get screwed over. permission to produce and royalties I'm sure the lawyers found a way for the labels to pass along nothing.
In my opinion the whole vinyl resurgence was just another passing fad. For most people vinyl was desirable only because of the hype that is was cool in a vague sort of retro style sense. While vinyl has always had some die hard fans that believe it to be the superior sonic format the truth is that digital has significantly better potential dynamic range and in theory has infinite durability. Records collect dust, get scratched, get warped and eventually degrade just from the stylus dragging through the groove. The only advantage I see is the larger package provides a larger canvas for album art.
I've head the "passing fad" nonsense for a decade now and sales keep rising. Let's talk about in a few years...
But analogue sound “is”Digital has to become “is”
to be the same as analogue.
I’ll take what already is.
I think it was when I saw Toto IV going for $20 used that I knew we were reaching the end of this particular wave of tulipomania. A record that had sold in the millions and which was by no means rare.... Then I saw a reissue of Jon Anderson’s first solo LP for $40. Unhinged.
People want something you don't understand so you call it "unhinged".
It was the price I considered unhinged, not the desire to own Olias of Sunhillow, which I wanted to buy. Fortunately, I found a first pressing in the same store for $8!
Spending money on R&D for vinyl, of all things, is practically oxymoronic. It's an obsolete technology that's achieved its inexplicable resurgence precisely *because* it's obsolete. In another sense, the "R&D" to improve on vinyl already happened, first with the CD and now with hi-res digital audio.
Great comment. The draw to vinyl is largely based on nostalgia. Digital streaming is an intangible thing. No moving parts, nothing to see, only sound. A record is physical. It has motion, the stylus chatters, the arm moves. You can understand how it works. When we were kids, all the jukeboxes had the record playing part totally visible. You could watch the mechanism move, grab the record and then play it. It was all "part of the show". I do a lot of vintage turntable restoration for customers, which is the only time I ever really play and listen to a record...just to make sure the repair is fully successful. Each time I'm reminded how inferior a format it is. The background noise is obvious, and even on the best setups, you can still perceive speed variation due to warp wow, poorly centered holes, and residual wow and flutter from the analog master tap. And yet, each time I get a real kick listening to music sounding as good as it does with a rock being dragged through a piece of plastic. There's just something about it that is a bit mesmerizing, and, well, fun. All that said, it's not sustainable. They have yet to come up with a solution for the loss of Apollo Masters a couple years back. That alone will put one heck of a kink in the ability to press new vinyl.
Very good point with the loss of the Apollo Masters. That was an absolute tragedy. One other thing on the general situation with vinyl being so difficult to produce these days: the PVC pellets used to make vinyl records are one more very vulnerable link in the supply chain. Something like more than half of the plastic used to make records in American plants comes from overseas (Thailand in particular), from companies that are notorious polluters, and whose factories can (and do) go down from time to time.
COVID didn't help at all either; the demand for plastics to make all kinds of other things besides vinyl records surged, further driving up prices for the raw materials, causing supply chain delays, etc.
If record companies really wanted to get their arms around the manufacturing piece of vinyl production, they would need to be founding new pressing plants all over the place as well as trying to bring back American PVC plastics manufacturing (much of which went away when the original vinyl market did back in the 90s). All in all, it's money I don't think the record industry either has or is willing to spend even if it did.
I say all this as someone who spent 2016-2020 working in a gigantic record store in Dallas, TX (Josey Records). The owners of the shop even bought an old local pressing operation (formerly known as A&R) and tried to get the old machines up & running. After a few years (during which they did press some really great records), they finally had to give it up when they realized to really get the plant fully operational, they'd have to get brand new parts custom-machined for all kinds of components, an expense that would have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I admired their tenacity for hanging onto the plant as long as they did, but in the end it just didn't make sense for them. On the plus side, the store itself has done great, and is now even bigger than when I left (literally millions of records in the Dallas store alone...it's nearly the size of a wal-mart).
Thank you for drawing some attention to the environmental issues behind producing vinyl. I have read repeatedly that the nurdles used to produce records are an awful source of pollution in many ways. One of the worst is that they frequently get lost at sea, swept overboard or the ship sinks, and we already have a mind-numbingly disgusting amount of microplastics on every beach in the world. Ultimately, I think it an environmental benefit that vinyl records not be a revived mass market item.
There are new pressing plants coming on line. You really are talking out of your hat.
I've been to the former Thai Plastics factory. It was not a notorious polluter. Nice try.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/28/vinyl-record-revival-environmental-impact-music-industry-streaming
https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-seasia/ph/News/news-stories/plastics-company-dumps-toxic-c/
It wasn't some random supposition on my part: this has been reported on. Thai Plastic and Chemicals Public Company Limited (TPC) has been noted for this activity for quite some time now.
Did I write “notorious polluter”? I think not. Look, there can be a legitimate range of opinions about the environmental effects of vinyl, we can all have our own preferences as to audio source, and for sure there’s a lot of conflicting information out there - do you think the former Thai Plastics factory showed you their whole operation? Or just the bits they wanted you to see? - but to misquote what others say in a reply is plain, flat out lame - and damn rude. It completely undercuts any respect one may have for whatever else you have to say.
Let me assure you that there are those who find environmental issues with vinyl production, whatever vinyl’s aesthetic superiority which I grant on a genuine audiophile system with close listening - when it was an original analog recording, and to simply try and shout them down is not going to work. I am always fine with changing my mind when presented with new evidence. You haven’t presented any. It’s just another anecdote. All of us who’ve been around have dozens of them by now. I suspect with your cv that you have more than most. Happy to hear about your adventures but don’t mistake them for the whole story.
I was given a surprisingly complete factory tour though not allowed to video some because of trade secrets. However, it appeared to be a very modern and environmentally responsible operation that supplies PVC products worldwide. Has been in operation since 1945. There are new non petri-chemical materials being experimented with and used for record pressing that appear to be very promising.
it is not because of nostalgia. You don't know what you are talking about but you are funny! Digital streaming is great. But you have nothing and are left with nothing. Clearly your repairs are inferior.
Sure, Mikey, whatever you say. We all know you're vinyl's #1 cheerleader, so this is to be expected. As for my repairs, you know nothing about my background or my experience, nor do you know the quality of my work. So don't think you're talking with some yahoo with no background in this. As they say, opinions are like ***holes....Everybody's got one.
Well, then I'm surprised by your comment's cynicism.....
I'm fine with vinyl. With really good gear and careful setup it can sound great. I grew up with it and had very high end turntables and cartridges before moving away from it. As I got older, the finicky nature of the whole thing and the constant quest for the next best cartridge, arm, mat, preamp, etc. just became too much for me. Most of my work is on vintage stuff (older Thorens, Garrard 301, etc.) I wouldn't expect these to perform at the levels of the best contemporary stuff, and I can't say I've got a lot of experience with the newer high end gear.
yes, but for the greedy sobs we have, most record pressing machines are paid for many times over from decades ago. i mean back in 1970 any records pressed retail cost 5.99 -7.99?? so actually making it was at least half that. faster forward to today, outside the current costs of raw materials and operating costs, pressing the pvc is basically free. the pvc is sold buy the ton, and those bags/boxes of black pucks....those plants are making bank n pressing 24/7, so it's still cheap enough to flood the market. Bestbuy stopped selling CDs years ago, but they started to sell vinyl shortly after... I'm sure they aren't making a lot but they are there for sale. vinyl isn't going to stop anytime soon, but it will fall in sales. finally Europe never really stop pressing vinyl, and Asia may have been near zero but never destroyed the machines like the US basically did so vinyl will be around for awhile...n by that i mean til 2030 or longer
Stick to whatever it is you know something about. It's not this subject.
your comment is moronic. CD was a big step downward in sound quality. Though there were no pops and clicks. Few of my 16,000 records have pops are clicks but most sound better than any digital version.
None of your records sound better than a CD, you just think they do because you've grown to like the way they sound. Regardless, it's a moot point now. Digital audio is now at 24bit/96khz+, well beyond CD quality, so even if there were a legitimate debate as between CD and LP sound, hi-res digital leaves them both in the dust so decisively that there's not even any room for debate any longer - LP listeners just like the distortion and all the silly and unnecessary rituals attendant to it. I just hope they confine their ridiculous nostalgia to LPs and don't start spawning new crazes like going back to distributing software on floppy disks.
Vinyl. I held out all through my years in college and med school. CDs were almost 20 bucks a pop, places like Tower Records were clearing out their vinyl inventories. 3 for ten bucks. A friend would buy 2 CDs for 30, I'd walk out with 9 albums for the same price. B&O turntable with a needle that cost more than most folks' CD players, which weren't cheap back then.
Fast-forward ten years or so, I had probably a couple thousand vinyl records. But my new car had a CD player so I bought one for my apartment. Purchased CDs, now considerably cheaper, at the rate of ten a week. Load ten in the car and just skip certain songs, or zip from one album to the next. Same thing at home with the remote control. It was a mistake buying the one that held 300 CDs, couldn't remember which ones were where, and got lazy with swapping them. But the convenience! Especially since I was making astonishing progress figuring out lead guitar by playing along to my favorite tunes. Wanna replay a certain segment, just a couple buttons on the remote. Magic.
I laughed at the whole vinyl revival thing. All the expensive retro things are just fads. I never did go digital in the sense of downloading or streaming music. Still can't fathom the ridiculousness of listening to songs through tiny "speakers" in your ear, or through a dumbphone. (My speakers cost considerably more than my B&O needle . . . ). I know, the warm sound quality of vinyl and all that. I'm not sure I can discern much of a difference, and it's kind of moot if it's a new recording made in a digital studio where they're bending over backwards to make everything sound "perfect" anyways?
But there has to be a balance re the convenience. I never did find a CD player I could use while running. But you can't play vinyl say in your car.
The record companies, at least the big ones, are beholden to their investors demanding ROI. Only it's not just a decent ROI anymore, it's squeezing every last nickel and dime out of every damn turnip. Look what it's done to everything else in this country. The shock should be why anyone would expect anything different at this point. And while I haven't gone digital, another interesting aspect to ponder is where consumerism leads us all to. At least with digital you don't have the plastic packaging and wondering what happens in the landfills. Although there must be a digital landfill somehow somewhere.
John Lennon had a record player in his car. So did Chris Blackwell.
Books and records are great. End of story.
Deep, very, very deep.
I've been writing "deeply" about this subject since the 1970s so at some point when you read yet another nonsensical story ridiculing what is actually happening today, sometimes going "light" is sufficient. So let me ask you this: are there stories mocking book buyers? or calling them hipsters or fadsters or claiming people buy books to fill shelves? No. I know this subject.
There's one big reason to buy vinyl that no one is mentioning: the artwork and the liner notes (ok 2 reasons). The large format of a 12" beats hell out of 4 inch square CD. And liner notes in a 5 point font squeezed into a CD booklet, well, somehow it lacks the gravitas of the tomes inscribed on the backsides of the old Blue Note pressings I started collecting in 1973.
Does the attraction for memorizing arcane details of the recording session and zoning out on the cover art disappear when you haven't just smoked the herb that you just cleaned on top of said cover art?
Say it ain't so. Or is it just that we're not sixteen anymore?
Next power outage I'm gonna hook up my amp and turntable to my Sears Die Hard battery to make sure I can continue to dig my vinyl when the grid goes down for good. The way the world's going, I would expect no less.
I have both a turntable (to be honest, three) and a CD player. I don't consider myself an audiophile; I just prefer playing records. In the last ten years I've traded a few thousand CDs for a couple hundred used LPs, and have been trading out records as well. I prefer records for a reason I haven't seen mentioned in these comments (though perhaps I missed it): 20-25 minutes of purposely sequenced music.
One comment spoke disparagingly of needing to get up every twenty minutes to change the record. For me, that's the point, and in a different way, it's another reason I don't see "new" vinyl records taking off. I've been disappointed, naively, to realize that the new records I purchase are just a CD's worth of music pressed onto vinyl, often a two-LP set with Side D blank.
I tired of CDs because I rarely want to hear 65-70 minutes of one artist at a time. And that generous time allotment leads some artists to insert filler material.
When creative artists were THINKING in LP mode, they sequenced a record side in the same way they sequenced a live set, just shorter. You pick an opener and a closer for each side, then create a flow with the inner tracks. Not everyone was as good at it, or as careful, but that's the LP attraction for me--a good "side" of music, then I get up, pick another record (usually already have that in mind) and put an another.
You really hit on something I read a while back about the changing ways that music is made in general. No longer do you see long drawn out instrumentals to begin a song. In the “swipe left” generation if the artist hasn’t givin’ you the meat in first 10 seconds they’re done. Also the fact that you don’t even need an album to achieve any type of fame in music these days. Just cover a popular song with some twist and you’re an “artist”. An LP used to be a concept. That’s gone.