The Vinyl Comeback Is Stalling?

[brianrost]

Here's a new piece from writer Ted Gioia who had written on the vinyl comeback about a year ago.

The bad news in short is the market growth for vinyl in 2021 was 95% and in 2022 only 4%. Although vinyl outpaced CDs in revenue in total units sold, when it comes to number of units sold CD and vinyl are still running neck and neck. The hyped cassette revival looks like, well, hype.

Even worse he wrote this:

But here’s an even more ominous sign. Half of vinyl buyers don’t own a record player. They apparently bought the Taylor Swift album as a kind of memorabilia—something a little nicer than a band T-shirt.

This can’t be a good thing for the record business. After all, how many records are you going to buy if you don’t have a turntable? This is like trying to sell Teslas as a status symbol to people who don’t drive.

 

[J Wilson]

It never started for me, I grew up with those noisy, warped aggravations and I'd never go back. CD's all day for me.

 

[gln1955]

Maybe for the young people who started buying vinyl, their shortcomings are hitting home.

 

[WG Plum]

Good, maybe prices will come down.

 

[Michedelic]

Never saw the point of it in the first place; just another naked emperor scenario. I gladly ditched most of what I had 30 years ago, no regrets. What was it that Barnum supposedly said?

 

[bass12]

There was no way that the “vinyl comeback” was going to last in any significant way. As prone to nostalgia as I can be, I just can’t see vinyl as particularly desirable in most circumstances.

 

[Watchootognbout]

I just got two CD's a day ago.
Vinyl is for wall displays only.
As I am NOT going to be buying a record player!

Edit:I like CD's over downloaded music because I get all the band info and pics in the printed liner.
Downloads get nothing but music.

 

[Michael Stanley 2112]

I remember a million years ago ... one of the first CD boxed sets I heard about was the Eric Clapton Collection (I think the Beetles might have been the first I heard about).

Being a huge fan of Mr. Clapton, I rushed right out and bought a CD player (component for my stereo) and ordered the boxed set.

I got the CDs and I was excited ... until I played one. Maybe the sound was too "clean" for blues or whatever. Anyway, it was awful.

That left a bad taste in my mouth so, I shied (? past-tense of "shy"?) away from CDs for a while.

It didn't take long (a couple of years, maybe) for the companies to understand some older music didn't translate well to digital format.

Anyway, a few years back, I saw one of my favorite records of all time ("Bark At The Moon") in vinyl and I figured: "What the hay".

I got the record on the turn table and I was (almost) disgusted. I didn't miss all the popping and scratching.

Maybe I got spoiled, but I'll take digital music any day.

 

[JimmyM]

When records are still going for $30 after all this time of the “renaissance,” no wonder it’s stalled out. Record companies are run by morons.

 

[Alper Yilmaz]

Apart from the beautiful ritual of putting the LP on a plinth and hearing the first touch of the stylus to the vinyl, the whole format is quite an expensive investment.

I remember giving a talk some time back in 2016, titled "From Studio to the Stereo," at an audiophile community get-together. I had just finished my latest album at the time and I talked about the whole production process including the compositions and arrangement, tracking sessions, rough mixes, mixing and finally mastering. We listened to some of the tracks individually and I explained to the audience how the whole thing evolved from a bunch of tracks into a final album.

Anyway, at the end of the talk, someone from the audience asked my why there was no release on vinyl. Just to tease the guy, I said "bring me a mastering level compressor/limiter, and I will make everything sound like analog and you won't be able to tell the difference." We got into this heated debate but it was all fine. Right that day, I bought a turntable with a decent cartridge and some albums which I already had the digital versions. I had a phono stage in one of my amps, so it was all fine.

I had some listening tests of the same material and found my digital was much better than the analog, yet the level of investment in the digital components of my stereo system was much higher than the analog. So, I never invested in the analog until recently.

Around Xmas, I decided to upgrade my turntable system to get back into intensive listening again. Tidal has left Turkey and Qobuz does not exist here. I am not a big fan of the sound quality or the interfaces of the other alternatives, so I realized I do not do any inquisitive listening anymore. So, I bought a much better cartridge and a separate phono stage, so now I really enjoy listening to vinyls, still behind my digital in quality; yet the ritual makes me listen to album after album fully concentrating on the music rather than having it in the background.

It is just me though... I have some friends who have thousands of LPs in their collections and have invested more than $50K in their vinyl setup! I do not think I will (or can) get there, but I am loving it!

 

[Alper Yilmaz]

By the way, I do not think any of the analog formats can have a huge comeback. Vinyl and cassette are not likely to disappear as long as there are hipsters out there, yet the share of them in the industry would be small in comparison to streaming...

 

[Deleted member 271037]

So the hipsters got tired of vinyl I guess...

Personally I still buy CDs for classical music but vinyl for everything else. Sadly there's a lot of stuff I can't find on vinyl unless I'm prepared to buy used, worn records. The back catalogue of most bands/artist isn't really available on vinyl. It's mostly just some (but not all) new releases and the back catalogue of major bands/artist.

Streaming is of course convenient in many situations but I rarely use it at home.

 

[mmon77]

My favorite hipster move was those that bought turntables, so they could enjoy all that pure, analog, warmth. then proceeded to connect them via Bluetooth, to their stereo.

 

[DrBnz]

Now wait a minute.... yeah, I wanna say they were cool. But being from that era I can honestly say, NO they weren't.
- Hiss and pop you heard while playing
- Scratched / dirty records .... needed to be handled like it was nitroglycerin
- Warped
- Took up a lot of space ... I still have a big block of them down in the basement
- Turntables were finely balanced instruments .... very touchy .... walking hard could make em skip
- And a diamond tipped stylus .... yeah, that was delicate is it gets .... and expensive

If I sit here and think about it, I'm sure I can go on and on.... And no they didn't sound "great" - Its what we had. For sound quality we used real-to-real tapes which were huge and had their own vast array of problems.

Then there was the future of audio .... the 8 track tape .... what a piece of "technology" they were. I can't say how many I threw out the window going down the road.

 

[knumbskull]

When records are still going for $30 after all this time of the “renaissance,” no wonder it’s stalled out. Record companies are run by morons.

in the UK, i remember CDs routinely costing £14.99 in the mid 90s. That’s £28 in today’s money! So vinyl is not badly priced if you compare it to this.

EDIT this is largely due to the UK experiencing heavy inflation just now. But still.

no argument from me re: morons….

 

[knumbskull]

Someone mentioned this survey on Twitter, it seems they asked around 3000 people. So while it is a useful finger-in-the-air exercise, it’s a bit bold to claim this represents “all” vinyl buyers!

 

[Ekulati]

The problem with the whole vinyl resurgence is it's based on the wrong thing: that is, rather than being based on something objective, like sound quality, it's based on the subjective element of the retro factor.

That's all well and good, but of course the qualities of vinyl will never be appreciated without a corresponding resurgence in high quality audio systems, marketed and available at reasonable prices for the average consumer. As a former low level audiophile, it just cracks me up seeing all the hipster folks into vinyl being played on their crappy little $75 turntables, maybe plugged into their computer as an "amp," then listening through earbuds.

The whole thing just misses the point, badly.

 

[Oddly]

Personally, I never fell for this vinyl revival 'nonsense'.
For me, music is entertainment, not some sort of High Art Form requiring expensive audio gear to appreciate.
Once I can hear the bassline, I'm good.

 

[FullumMusic]

There’s only so many albums people already own that they’re willing to rebuy on vinyl before they realize they’re spending a lot of money on music they already have on a medium that is incredibly flawed and a real hassle to actually listen to, I suppose.

I have a long tirade about why vinyl is, contrary to what some people think, way lower fidelity than digital. I’ll spare you all. To lazy to type it all out.

Novelties are only novel for so long. At the end of the day, digital forms of music are more accessible and more convenient and always where people are when people listen to music. And I’m not including CD in digital forms because it’s a physical medium.

It would be foolish to think a retro novelty bump in sales of a seriously flawed music medium would be a full scale comeback with any longevity or market dominance. Outselling CDs doesn’t mean much when “nobody” is buying CDs anymore. CD and Vinyl fighting for market shares is like a couple of Vespa scooters fighting for second place when the first place rider is on a MotoGP race bike.

Also, all the talk about hipsters. Hipsters are in their 30s and 40s now. They’re not driving the market. Youth always drives the music industry and millennial hipsters are already old news. Post-millennial generations don’t wax nostalgic {rimshot} about vinyl.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

Wasn’t the cassette resurgence largely attributed to the cassette tape included in the Guardians of the Galaxy CD box set?